Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This is the first of two articles by Sebastián Salazar Bondy, published under the pseudonym “Juan Eye,” on the Mexican art exhibition organized in Lima by La Crónica newspaper. The author believes the show is exceptional for its positive [...]

This document is an essay by Jacinto Quirarte outlining key moments in the history of modern Mexican and Mexican-American art in the United States. It begins with a discussion of the Mexican School, detailing central figures, sociopolitical [...]

The article written by the researcher Pilar García de Germenos presents the cultural biography of Alfredo Ramos Martínez from 1910 to 1920, to help our understanding of the changes he implemented at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. During [...]

This essay, written by Francisco Díaz de León, director of the Escuela de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting] in Tlalpan, explains that the Schools favor an aesthetic education and individual expression over technical education. He [...]

This is the third of four articles on the nature of the current painting movement in Mexico. It classifies those painters and writers as retrogressive, who continue to paint under outdated and foreign influences without contributing to the local [...]

This is the first of a four-part article on the technical nature of the Mexican painting movement. Violent aesthetic transformations had occurred in the last few years while art criticism against painters oscillated between grand praise and fury. [...]

In this letter, the painter [and writer] Roubaix de l’Abrie Richey, known by the pseudonym, “Robo,” the husband of the Italian artist and photographer, Tina Modotti, writes to Edward Weston from Mexico City. The writer is visiting Mexico in [...]

The journalist and future historian of journalism, Agustín Agüeros, undertakes a defense of Mexican artists who have studied in Europe and are now showing their work at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes (midyear 1906). Agüeros makes every [...]

This article reviews the second exhibition of paintings by children at the Escuelas al Aire Libre [Open Air Schools] run by the Secretaría de Educación Pública [SEP, Ministry of Public Education]. The exhibition was held at the Palacio de Minería [...]

Fradique’s article, signed in Guadalajara, which is the capital of the state of Jalisco, sets out to review the work of some of the artists from that state. He begins with the “elders”: Dr. Atl, Alfredo Ramos Martínez (sic) and Rafael Ponce de [...]

To strengthen the idea of a modern art museum in Mexico, Carlos Román proposes that the modern and contemporary material accumulated in the warehouses of the Academia de San Carlos be added to the collection. He also suggests allocating public funds [...]

This interesting article by the critic Okusai (the pseudonym of José Juan Tablada) reports on the two important art exhibitions held in Mexico in 1906: that of the magazine Savia Moderna [Modern Sap] and another of artists sponsored by the Mexican [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

Carlos Mérida states that he will base his commentary on the exhibition of the Escuelas Libres de Pintura [Open-Air Schools of Painting], taking place at the Palacio de Minería, on the writings of Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo), which he feels could [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

The old Guatemalan Estridentista, Arqueles Vela, muses on how the revolution influenced Mexican art. He does not believe that cubism or the poetry of the proletariat were the first fields to be affected; instead, he points to the corridos, the [...]

This manifesto from the Treinta-treintistas [¡30-30! mouvement] discusses the incorporation of new elements and announces the group’s purging and expulsion of old members, either for being neo-academics or for attempting to eliminate the [...]

In the second treinta-treintista manifesto, the group declares the reason for its dispute. It states that the struggle between independent painters and the academics intensified when the presidency changed hands, since certain conservative teachers [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

In this article, the author Margarita Nelken recalls her meeting in Madrid with the Mexican painter Alfredo Ramos Martínez who had at the time organized an exhibition of works produced by the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Painting [...]

The article comments that the honeymoon of the painter Alfredo Ramos Martínez as director of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes has been eclipsed by the students in the Academy shouting for his resignation. At the same time, the students in the [...]

This short article reports on some painters’ comments on possible changes in the curriculum at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes and the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open-Air Schools of Painting]. Details of the changes were kept [...]

The author, Jorge Useta, reports that a group of students at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes has called for the resignation of the director, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, because of his favoritism toward the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre [Open- [...]

Diego Rivera writes a biography of Mardonio Magaña, who arrived in Mexico City at age 52. Magaña started to carve wood and stone while he worked as a waiter at La Casa del Artista, a branch establishment, part of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas [...]

The writer of this article claims that there has never been a more anarchic art scene than the one he is currently witnessing. It is the most improvised of all the current movements and, therefore, the one most likely to be fruitful and to prosper. [...]

This is the last installment of an article in four parts by painters David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jean Charlot, about the character of the current movement of painting in Mexico. The article, as foretold by the title, is going to be about the positive [...]

In the article entitled “La obra admirable de Diego Rivera” [The praiseworthy work of Diego Rivera], Ortega faithfully follows the steps of his master and in great detail explains each of the figures included in his recently unveiled “ [...]

Alfredo Ramos Martínez, director of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes [National School of Fine Arts], discusses the new trend at the Escuela al Aire Libre [Open-Air School] in Coyoacán and the free workshops at the Academia. With freedom to [...]

Daniel Cosío Villegas wonders why the natural order of having better writers than artists—painters, to be more precise—has been inverted in Mexico. He concludes that there are many reasons: an intense nationalism in politics as well as in [...]

This article describes Diego Rivera’s lecture in the library at the Academia de Bellas Artes [Academy of Fine Arts], which was well attended. There was a great deal of interest in his presentation, particularly in artistic and intellectual circles [...]

Xavier Villaurrutia conducts a retrospective of Mexican painting in the 1920s, the origin of which he ascribes to the revolutionary movement of the previous decade. In this context, the author criticizes those painters who continued to follow [...]

In this book published in 1937, Frances Toor, the North American promoter based in Mexico, makes a study of the most representative artists of modern Mexican painting. Toor served as editor and author of the introduction, while the painter Carlos Mé [...]

In this book, published in 1951, Virginia Stewart looks back at the 45 most representative artists of modern Mexican painting. Her list, created at the end of the golden era of the “Mexican School of Painting,” includes painters from the first [...]

Carlos Mérida reviews the 1926 Exhibition of the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes. He comments that what stands out for its pictorial values, is the group of works presented by the Escuelas de Pintura al Aires Libre [Open-Air Painting Schools], but [...]

Rubén Darío kept in close contact with the Mexican artists settled in Paris, such as Alfredo Ramos Martínez, Roberto Montenegro, Ángel Zárraga, Diego Rivera, and Dr. Atl. This statement by Ernesto Mejía Sánchez documents the exchanges with the [...]

La exposición de la joven pintura mexicana [The Exhibition: The New Generation of Mexican Painting] was presented at three cities: Paris, Berlin and Madrid. The Spanish art critic Gabriel García Maroto gave a lecture in December 1926 when the show [...]

Painter Carlos Mérida thanks and praises Alfredo Ramos Martínez, who was then director of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, for organizing a series of exhibitions that would influence the artistic development of Mexico. In the introduction to [...]