Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this text, eminent Latin American avant-garde poet César Vallejo asserts that “among the symptoms of the final decline of the capitalist intelligentsia is the vice of coterie.” He argues that the crises of economic imperialism are reflected [...]

According to José Carlos Mariátegui, Breton (in his second manifesto) “prosecuted” all the writers and artists who, having initially embraced surrealism, then renounced it. Though he mentions the attacks on Pierre Naville, he claims that the [...]

In this essay published in 1985, educator and literary critic Roberto de Espada describes the situation of the visual arts in Uruguay in the sixties. He analyzes how informalism was assimilated and internalized by important artists in the country and [...]

Brazilian art critic Frederico Morais bases this text on two writings on the student uprising in Paris in May 1968: “L’artiste et la société” by French critic Michel Ragon and “L’image-action de la société ou la politisation culturelle [...]

This is the transcript of a statement made by the poet Tristan Tzara when he was interviewed by Flávio de Carvalho during the latter’s trip to Europe in 1934. Tzara speaks at great length about Dadaist methods, the movement he leads, and the [...]

In this text, Ronaldo Brito provides a critical analysis of Constructivist tendencies in modern art. He argues that the emergence of Neo-Concretism in Rio de Janeiro in 1959 was a consequence of the crisis of Constructivist ideologies. Brito presents [...]

In this article the members of the group El Techo de la Ballena (Caracas, 1961–68) explain what prompted them to create the group. Keeping the works of the Surrealist and Dadaist movements in mind, but with no intention of reviving them, the [...]

This manifesto begins by saying: “Please stop this aesthetic joke that is supposed to be profound! Stop boring us with yet another example of egocentric folk art! This is nothing but vanity.” It argues that if Jean Tinguely wants us to believe [...]

In her lecture, the Mexican art historian Ida Rodríguez Prampolini warns about the dangerous influence of Dadaist ideas in Latin America. She thus sharply criticizes the art movement that began in Europe in the early twentieth century, and goes on [...]

In this essay, along with posthumous praise for the figure, André Breton, Octavio Paz establishes a new approach to surrealism, automatic writing and the concept of revelation: “The critics are saying that surrealism is no longer the [...]

In the introduction to this catalog, César Moro (a celebrated Peruvian poet and artist) alludes to the antecedents of Surrealism within the avant-garde movements of the beginning of the twentieth century. He also identifies the contact points that [...]

Enrique Azcoaga offers a negative critique of the exhibition of destructive art, which he describes as artistically mounted garbage heap, a crude stage, literal and pompier. He outlines the differences between this trend with both Dadaism and [...]

Kenneth Kemble tackles the authorship of an idea of destructive art, which is more an experimentation than an -ism. In his view, destructive art evokes the diversity of man’s essential needs: destruction as emotion, the pleasure and the [...]