Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this article, poet and art critic Jorge Gaitán Durán takes stock of the activities that took place on the Colombian art scene in 1946. He begins with a reflection on the overall state of the visual arts in the country. He asserts that 1946 [...]

Art critic Walter Engel wrote five articles on exhibitions held in 1948, among them the solo show of artist Carlos Díaz Forero, sponsored by the Universidad Nacional of Bogotá and held at the Museo Nacional in that city in August; the exhibition of [...]

This chapter of the encyclopedia Historia del arte colombiano [History of Colombian Art] written by Germán Rubiano is divided into three parts. In the first part, Rubiano discusses the art that is referred to in the chapter and that he considers to [...]

In March 1988, journalist and editor Guillermo González Uribe, then editor-in-chief of the journal ¡Viva el arte! interviewed nine Colombian artists of different generations to ask their opinions about the following: What function should be [...]

In the catalogue text for the exhibition Fanny Sanín: Obras de 1960 a 1986 held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá, John Stringer, the Australian curator of the show, analyzes the work produced by Fanny Sanín, a Colombian artist who lives in [...]

This catalogue was published by the Banco de la República of Colombia in February 1963 in conjunction with the exhibition of twenty-three paintings from the bank’s Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango art collection. The exhibition was held in the [...]

This document is the catalogue to the Salón de Arte Moderno held in the exhibition hall of the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in November 1957. In addition to an introduction, the catalogue contains a list with basic information (style, dimension, [...]

Critic Marta Traba’s premise in this essay is that the process by which art emerges has been a constant in the history of Colombia’s national culture. Traba uses the word “emerging” in reference to artistic expressions that transcend local [...]

Published in the catalogue to the exhibition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Primer Salón de Arte Moderno, this text by Sylvia Juliana Suárez presents the idea, process and results of a curatorial and editorial project formulated by [...]

In this text, historian and critic Germán Rubiano Caballero provides an overview of Colombian art from the twenties through the eighties. He analyzes each decade on the basis of two key criteria: how the modern is constructed and the tension between [...]

“Anatomía de un Método” [Anatomy of a Method], by the artist and writer Samuel Montealegre, is a review of Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar’s sculptural work. This essay was written as an introduction to the exhibition of the artist’s works at [...]

The “Acta de constitución del Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá” [Articles of Association of the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota] begins with the following two lines: “On November 20, 1962, at the Teatro Colón, at 7 p.m., the Museo de Arte [...]

In 1984, just a few months after Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar donated his sculpture Custodia Homenaje [Custodia Homage] to the recently restored cathedral in his hometown of Pamplona, he wrote the text now known as “La Catedral y el Arzobispo” [ [...]

In the introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition Pintura abstracta de Colombia (Biblioteca Luís Ángel Arango, Bogotá, June 11-25, 1958), Marta Traba points out two problems related to the reception and production of abstract art in Colombia [...]

“El americanismo de los años 40 y la nueva vanguardia colombiana” [The Americanism of the 1940s and the New Colombian Avant-Garde], an essay by the historian Álvaro Medina, published in 1978, discusses the artistic languages inspired by the [...]

In this article, the poet and critic Jorge Gaitán Durán discusses the development of sculptor Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar as a painter. The author outlines the artist’s career and refers to some of the artist’s technical traits; he praises the [...]

This text by historian and critic Walter Engel may be the first essay to specifically focus on Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar’s work in relief, which Engel considers key to the artist’s transition from painting to sculpture. Engel’s provides a [...]

In 1984, the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá (MAM) in conjunction with the Flota Mercante Grancolombiana published a large-format book entitled Ramírez Villamizar with the most complete set of reproductions of work by this Colombian artist found in [...]

The essay “El arte clásico de Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar” by art critic Casimiro Eiger is one of the first critical texts to address Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar’s work as part of the geometric abstraction movement. Eiger considers Ramírez’ [...]

This text by Colombian art critic Camilo Calderón discusses Colombian artist Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar’s production from the sixties. At that time, Ramírez Villamizar’s work was undergoing a transition from abstract (geometric) painting to [...]

In this text, art critic Ana María Escallón discusses three basic phases in the work of Colombian painter Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar: a first experimental stage; a second stage of searching and inner exploration; and a third stage marked by [...]

In this text art critic Marta Traba analyzes the production of Colombian sculptor Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar up to 1963. Written for the catalogue of the exhibition Seis artistas contemporáneos colombianos, organized by Traba and Hernán Díaz [...]

In 1975, the Colombian art critic Fausto Panesso published the book Los intocables, in which he presented six interviews with some of the most important artists of the twentieth century in Colombia. One of them was the painter and sculptor Eduardo [...]

The book Así hablan los artistas [That’s How Artists Talk] is a compendium of twelve interviews of various twentieth-century Colombian artists. The chapter, “El Sueño del Orden” [The Dream of Order] records a conversation between the [...]

In 1989, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar showed his series of works titled Homenaje a los Artífices Precolombinos [Tribute to Pre-Columbian Artisans] at the III Bienal de La Habana [Third Havana Biennial]. The Colombian sculptor wrote an essay for the [...]

This document makes some relevant points in the debate over abstract art in Colombia that was sparked by the monument to Bolívar, originally commissioned from the sculptor Édgar Negret by the Ministry of Public Works. In the article, the Colombian [...]

This document contains a selection of reviews by the Polish art critic Casimiro Eiger on the work of the sculptor Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar. In these reviews, written for the radio station Radiodifusora Nacional de Colombia between the late 1940s [...]

In this article, poet and critic Luis Vidales expresses his position on the debate surrounding abstract and figurative art, a polemic central to Colombian art at the time. First, Vidales argues that certain concepts have been poorly defined in [...]

In this text, Austrian historian and critic Walter Engel, who lived in Colombia starting in 1938, discusses the suspension of the Salón Anual de Artistas Colombianos from 1947 to 1949. He observes that during that period “historic” events took [...]

This is the second part of the article “Primeras etapas de la abstracción en Colombia II” [First Stages of Abstraction in Colombia II] that critic María Elvira Iriarte published in issue 23 of the Revista Arte en Colombia. In this text, she [...]

This is the first part of an article published by critic María Elvira Iriarte in 1984 in which she reconstructs the period during which abstract art came to play a central role in the visual arts in Colombia. In a chronological overview, Iriarte [...]

The author of this document claims that Colombian painting has no past. According to the Argentine critic Marta Traba, the visual arts produced in Colombia from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century are of no interest [...]

[This document includes] a four-page brochure whose first page reads: “Universidad Nacional de Colombia/ Museo Nacional/ Exposición de pintura/ contemporánea/ octubre 1948.” The other three pages contain the names of the artists participating [...]

In these two supplements, Viennese historian and critic Walter Engel describes exhibitions and artists that in his view shaped the modern art scene in Colombia from 1934 to 1957. Engel distinguishes two distinct periods: 1934 to 1951, and 1952 to [...]

In this 1947 article, the Ukrainian historian, Juan Friede, argues that it is unfair to pigeonhole young Colombians in preconceived models that ignore their “indigenous vitality.” He admits that artists, such as the Spaniards Pablo Picasso and [...]

In June 1960, the exhibition, 3000 años de arte colombiano [3000 Years of Colombian Art], was held in Miami and Washington. The journal Lámpara [Lamp] (Bogotá, published 1952–85) printed a supplement with writings by the curators who performed [...]