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 article is one of the few that describes the murals painted in several primary schools in Mexico, thus it allows us to know what it was like before its total or partial destruction. The title of this mural by Pablo O’Higgins was Vida y [...]

This article is a review of the exhibition of 19th- and 20th-century Jalisco painting that took place at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in the capital of Mexico. The exhibition included works by José María Estrada, Dr. Atl, Roberto Montenegro, José [...]

 María Izquierdo addresses two topics in this short article. She analyzes the characteristics of the five most important galleries in Mexico City: the one at the University, Galería Espiral, Galería de Arte y Decoración, Galería de Arte María [...]

While this article mounts a defense of Mexican painting with “human/social content,” it also admits that this art has entered into a “period of crisis or, if you will, reorientation.” In today’s artwork, Berdecio sees “unmistakable signs [...]

Critic Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna reviews the content of the newly opened Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. After several visits to take in the breadth of the collection, he concludes that the Mexican painting section [...]

A mere three years after her arrival in Mexico, the Argentina critic Raquel Tibol decided to gather various painters’ opinions about the exhibition of contemporary art from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Diego [...]

This article is a complaint by José María García Ascot against the authorities of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), which had just published a catalog with an image of the eighteen works sent to represent Mexico in the XXIX Venice [...]

This article describes the activities in the French city of Bordeaux during “Mexican Week,” the event that was sponsored by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes [INBA, National Institute of Fine Arts] and organized to present exhibitions of [...]

This is a review of the exhibition of modern Mexican art that the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes [INBA, National Institute of Fine Arts] sent to Bordeaux, France; it was subsequently shown in Paris and Milan, Italy. Jaime Torres Bodet, the [...]

In this article Margarita Nelken, the critic of Spanish origin, reviews the Salón Anual de Pintura that is taking place at the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana (SPM) in Mexico City. After appreciating the work of a few of the exhibitors, the author [...]

This short document tells us about the mural at the Confederación Campesina [Mexican Peasants Confederation] “Emiliano Zapata” in the city of Puebla. The fine arts department of the SEP [Ministry of Public Education] commissioned the work from [...]

Art critic Raquel Tibol questions the writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón and four artists from the second generation of the Mexican School of painting–Raúl Anguiano, Alberto Beltrán, Leopoldo Méndez, and José Chávez Morado—about the letter signed [...]

Art critic Rosa Castro asked three respected Mexican artists for their opinions on the Bienal Interamericana de Pintura y Grabado [Inter-American Biennial of Painting and Printmaking]. Raúl Anguiano felt that the biennial was the most important [...]

Raúl Anguiano believed that the best-known painters had made costly mistakes and had experienced great failures. He referred to the “pintura bajo el agua” [“underwater painting”] by Diego Rivera as much as to the sculpture-painting by [...]

Raúl Anguiano believes that mechanical procedures can be used to produce art more quickly and easily, but that the value of the results does not stem from the use of these procedures. Like Diego Rivera, Anguiano believed that some of Siqueiros’ [...]

A review of the exhibition Plástica Jalisciense, 1668-1953 organized by Lola Álvarez Bravo, under the auspices of the government of the State of Jalisco and the Universidad de Guadalajara, and held at the Museo de Guadalajara. The exhibition [...]

This brief article reports on the Centro de Experimentación Socialista [Center for Socialist Experimentation], which was attended by proletarian children in Mexico during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas. With the pedagogical goal of achieving a [...]

The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) published this catalog along with the 1943 exhibition, The Latin American Collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It was the first major exhibition of Latin American art at MoMA, and it included works by [...]