Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

To provide context for non-object art in Peru, researcher Hugo Salazar del Alcázar briefly cites theorist Juan Acha. Salazar del Alcázar is critical, however, in his description of a scene that in no way partakes of the avant-garde enthusiasm Acha [...]

This document is an interview with Peruvian critic and theorist Juan Acha, who lived in Mexico. It sheds light on the uncertainties and concerns facing “art in Latin America” from the perspective of Uruguay and the countries of the Southern Cone [...]

The essay “Visión panorámica de las nuevas cartografías. Los años setenta: se borran los límites” is the first chapter of the monographic book by Zuleiva Vivas on the life and work of Claudio Perna. In it, the author provides an overview of [...]

In a text on the drawings and prints of José Luis Cuevas written in 1985, the art historian Catalina Banko compares his work to that of the Mexican muralists in order to show the major differences between them. To accomplish this, the Venezuelan [...]

The author, Juan Ríos, responds to the statement released by the IAC regarding the controversy generated by the opinions offered by critic Juan Acha in the catalogue for the Exposición Homenaje for Sérvulo Gutiérrez. Ríos believes it is “too [...]

This is the communiqué issued by the Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo (IAC) [Institute of Contemporary Art] in Lima on the subject of the disagreement between the writer Juan Ríos and the art critic Juan Acha about the opinions expressed by Acha in [...]

Author Juan Ríos continues his exchange of open letters by responding the publication of a letter in El Comercio (Lima, October 19, 1961), wherein Juan Acha defends himself against the accusation that he showed disrespect to Sérvulo Gutiérrez in [...]

Well-known writer Sebastián Salazar Bondy states that, as in the case of Sérvulo Gutiérrez, there are lives and works “that stimulate debate, that appear destined to be fought over even after they have come to an end.” Regardless of the [...]

Author Juan Ríos responds to the letter published by El Comercio wherein Juan Acha responded to the first letter Ríos had sent to protest Acha’s assessment in the prologue to the catalogue for the Exposición Homenaje for Sérvulo Gutiérrez, [...]

The author, Alfonso Castrillón, discusses a number of conceptual events that took place in Lima in the 1960s and compares them to other more recent ones, including the group exhibition Signo X Signo (1979) and Acción Furtiva (1980), performance [...]

This is the first part of the (two-part) survey “Por qué no vivo en el Perú…” [Why I Don’t Live in Peru] conducted by the magazine Hueso Húmero in 1981. The magazine initially posed this question to the following ten intellectuals ( [...]

In this newspaper article, Edgardo Pérez Luna reviews an exhibition organized by the Grupo Señal at the IAC (Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo). According to the columnist, the young members of the group (Emilio Hernández, José Tang, Jaime Dávila [...]

This text is an article by Francisco Bendezú, a Peruvian poet, in which he critiques a series of exhibitions held in Lima (Peru) at the end of 1965. Among various shows in the Peruvian capital, the author emphasizes the ones by Luis Arias Vera and [...]

This is Luis Antonio Meza’s review of Mimuy, the installation created by Mario Acha, Miguel Malatesta, and Efraín Montero. The journalist and musician quotes the critic Juan Acha to explain the nature of an installation. Referring to the title of [...]

Augusto Ortiz de Zevallos responds to Juan Acha’s arguments, which were published a week earlier in El Comercio. Both articles were key elements in the debate concerning Motociclista No. 3, Luis Zevallos Hetzel’s work of art that was awarded [...]

Gustavo Buntinx interviews Mirko Lauer on his social perspectives on the analysis of visual arts when applied to “the cultural structural order” currently in Peru. Lauer, commencing from a theoretical point of view, discusses the situation of the [...]

In this text, Aracy Amaral considers the strong negative responses provoked by a work entitled Etsedrón in the 1975 (XIII) São Paulo Biennial. She argues that this work provoked such responses because of its visceral power and because it is [...]

The Argentine critic Jorge Romero Brest states that he generally agrees with the lecture that Juan Acha gave at the XVII Congreso Extraordinario de la AICA [17th Extraordinary Conference of the AICA], held in Caracas in 1983. However, Romero Brest [...]