Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

According to curator Carolina Ponce de León, the recent focus on multiculturalism, identity, and difference has lent renewed visibility to Latin American art, although it is understood strictly in terms of otherness. Multiculturalism has also given [...]

In this essay, Rita Ferrer discusses photography based on an international critique of several periods. She refers to authors such as Roland Barthes, Charles Baudelaire, and the Chilean artist Carlos Leppe, claiming that they all share a “ [...]

This essay by Alberto Madrid is on the exhibition Fotografía: intervenciones, cruces y desvíos. His play of words “field of reference out of field” emerged in the essay questioning the bibliographic references with which [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the Escena de Avanzada twenty years after Nelly Richard coined the term. Though it originally had militant undertones, the term evolved into a historical category. It applied to a set of texts and artworks that Richard [...]

In this article Milan Ivelic discusses conditions in Chile for the benefit of Spanish visitors to the exhibition Chile Vive that was held at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. One of the main things that stands out about Chile, as seen [...]

In this article, Justo Pastor Mellado explores the immediate connections that Nicanor Parra created for objectual (object-based) drawing in his Trabajos Prácticos series on the occasion of his exhibition in Madrid. The author raises [...]

This text is part of El gran solipsismo, Juan Luis Martínez. Obra visual (Santiago: Editorial Puntángeles, 2002), the collection of essays written by the researcher José de Nordenflycht. The author considers the work in question [...]

In this essay, divided into five sections, Ronald Kay analyzes and describes certain aspects of Eugenio Dittborn’s work. In “El cuerpo que mancha” (The Body that Stains) Kay discusses the body’s various fluids in terms of [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado wrote three interventions for the Seminario de interpretación de la coyuntura plástica. This third “polemical” text ranges from what was taking place in the visual arts field in Chile to what was [...]

In this fourteen-point manifesto, Eugenio Dittborn outlines his ideas about drawing. He identifies to whom the artist is indebted when he is drawing, referring to himself (“the author owes his drawings to…”) and explains what [...]

In this article, which appeared in the sixth catalogue for the Festival Franco-Chileno de Video Arte (1986), Nelly Richard discusses how video was used for artistic purposes in Chile. From a theoretical standpoint, she explores the experimental use [...]

The curator and researcher Alberto Madrid analyzes Historias de identificación (Histories of Identification), housed in one of the rooms at the grand exhibition held at the MNBA in Santiago, Chile, which uses portraits to record presence and [...]

In this article Pablo Oyarzún provides a critical review of the art produced over the course of three decades. He notes the lack of a tradition that could bear witness to and interpret art production in Chile. From the early twentieth century& [...]

Nelly Richard focuses on a number of artists as part of her assessment of the status of painting in Chile during the 1970s and 1980s. She discusses a selection of works by a group of artists who take a critical approach to the painting tradition, [...]

This is Pablo Oyarzún’s critical review of Nelly Richard’s book Márgenes e Instituciones (Margins and Institutions). He acknowledges her role in the field of Chilean art and her contributions to a new approach to art [...]

The theorist Justo Pastor Mellado outlines his curatorial approach for the exhibition 1973–2000: Transferencia y densidad. He begins by defining concepts such as “curator,” discussing the term’s evolution in Chile and its [...]

This article by Adriana Valdés is a continuation of “Escritura y silenciamiento” (Writing and Silencing) published in 1977 in Revista Mensaje, a text that would have been unthinkable at the height of the repression and censorship [...]

In this brief essay Gaspar Galaz discusses a series of landmark events that took place in the 1980s and 1990s. In his opinion this period was characterized by an economic boom in Chile (fueled by neoliberal policies) and by conceptual approaches to [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado’s essay “Breve nota sobre pintura chilena: 1950–88,” introduced the traveling exhibition Cirugía Plástica [Plastic Surgery] to Berlin audiences. Mellado mentions certain specific features of [...]

The essay “Parpadeo y piedad,” which appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition Cirugía plástica (Plastic Surgery), held in Berlin, discusses art in Chile, specifically, the art produced in the wake of the 1973 fascist [...]

   In her essay “Sobre arte y política(s): contraoficialidad, poder y lenguajes,” written for the exhibition catalogue Cirugía plástica (Plastic Surgery), Nelly Richard reflects on the socio-political and [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado discusses the evolution of Chilean painting, from its roots to the 1980s. He divides his essay into six sections that explore the field’s history, from José Gil de Castro to the early twentieth century, remembering [...]

In this essay Justo Pastor Mellado presents an extension of his theory concerning the vital contribution made by printing to the emergence of “modernity” in Chilean art. The text, arranged in 21 sections, describes the evolution of [...]

Justo Pastor Mellado explains the reasons that motivated the Chilean submission to the X Mostra da Gravura, which was a desire to articulate a new artistic cartography. The hypothesis he lays out in this text points to formal movements in the field [...]

Nelly Richard writes about Eugenio Dittborn’s airmail paintings, discussing the folds and marks that are created as they travel through the postal system and what they mean. In her opinion, these “production marks” should be [...]

In this essay Eugenio Dittborn writes about his Pinturas aeropostales [Airmail Paintings], discussing them in poetic terms laid out in 13 sections in which he describes how they were put together and how they were supposed to function. He explains [...]

Gonzalo Muñoz discusses three of the processes that Eugenio Dittborn uses in his work, indicating the presence of an intent and a strategy. The first is “the relief” created by the combination of drawing and photography in [...]

The essayist Pablo Oyarzún discusses the work of Eugenio Dittborn, stitching together a patchwork quilt of quotes and references. He talks about what is “legible” and “illegible” in the Chilean experimental artist&rsquo [...]

Nelly Richard discusses the artistic aspects of the genre of works by Eugenio Dittborn known as Pintura aeropostal (Airmail Painting). Rather than focusing on a particular work, Richard contemplates the artist’s process and its effects. While [...]

The critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado writes about Gonzalo Díaz’s participation in the exhibition Cuatro artistas chilenos en el CAYC de Buenos Aires: Díaz, Dittborn, Jaar, Leppe. Pastor Mellado discusses the role that D& [...]

Unable to refer specifically to the works that would be shown at the exhibition about which he was attempting to write, Pablo Oyarzún, the Chilean essayist and an authority on philosophy, discusses the idea involved in the term “context& [...]

This text by Nelly Richard is based on a collection of quotes, which trace an argumentative arc that express her ideas about the exhibition she is reviewing. She also discusses certain situations in the art field at the time that show how the first [...]

In this short text, Eugenio Dittborn offers a brief, poetic description of the formal processes that provide him with the images he uses in his works. He highlights the typology of the selected images (photographs of public contemporary life) and [...]

Miscellaneous articles and references to art in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–89). The publication provides quotes from multiple sources, including members of the Chilean art world at the time and their theoretical-literary [...]

Eugenio Dittborn published a poetic-visual creation in La Separata: a text illustrated with a photograph taken by Carlos Gallardo. Dittborn’s poetic prose is based on three points whose sequence produces a similar structure. It begins with & [...]

In this text the cultural critic Nelly Richard poses two questions: What strategy is being used? And what is the policy as regards to a cultural approach? Richard’s questions inform her analysis of the ideas underpinning the Provincia señ [...]

In the document El arte en Chile: una historia que se recita, otra que se construye (Art in Chile: One Historical Account That Is Recited, Another That Is Constructed), Nelly Richard discusses the historical skullduggery involved in that particular [...]

In this essay Nelly Richard addresses the new approach to painting taken by some artists in response to what she referred to as the Escena de Avanzada. In her review of the BENMAYOR/DIAZ/DITTBORN/DUCLOS/LEPPE exhibition, Richard discusses the [...]

In a series of eight notes, Nelly Richard discusses Chilean artworks and the artists who produced them during the late 1970s. Her use of “notes” indicates that she does not intend to present a uniform view of cultural projects or an all- [...]