Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this article, Marta Traba maintains that the German artists Guillermo Wiedemann and Leopoldo Richter achieved an understanding of, and transmitted the essence and spirit of “the black race and the Indian race, and the ambience characteristic of [...]

In this document, Professor Amelia Malagamba explores how Afro-Mexican icons and symbols, as well as sociopolitical issues in the African-American community, have been transformed into what she terms “cultural capital.” A “cultural capital”as [...]

In this text, Gerardo Mosquera introduces the exhibition Ante América [Facing the Americas] with an essay describing the common social, political and economic framework that has fostered the art of what he calls “el Sur” or “Nuestra América [...]

Lucy Lippard recounts a history of art in the United States during the 1970s and ‘80s centered on cultural mixing. She begins by attesting to the failure of the idea of the “melting pot” in the United States. Instead, she argues that Western [...]

In this essay, Arturo Lindsay documents the confluence of Post-modernism in the U.S. and the mestizaje [racial and cultural intermingling] of Latinos in order to create a “Latino aesthetic”—one that is grounded in syncretic spiritual beliefs. [...]

In this brief, bilingual artist statement Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons expresses her belief that art is “The transformation of ordinary things into a vision, a new dimension that wasn’t their original purpose.” Therefore, she explains that [...]

Writer and artist Nicholasa Mohr gives an overview of the development of popular art by Puerto Ricans in New York City, and ties these artistic manifestations to political struggles. She observes how graffiti and murals produced by Puerto Rican youth [...]

This essay assembles a genealogy of avant-garde—yet socially committed—interventionist art practices that took place in the South Bronx starting in the 1960s New York City. The essay, written by curator Betti-Sue Hertz, examines how artists have [...]

Artist, writer, and activist, Judy Baca analyzes the ideological function served by traditional forms of public art: monuments that commemorate dominant histories and confirm the power of the state and works that ultimately serve the interests of [...]

Tablada discusses the work of Miguel Covarrubias, the young cartoonist who was almost totally unknown in Mexico at the time but was making a name for himself as a magazine illustrator in the United States. Like Tablada, Covarrubias lived in New York [...]