Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This unsigned article reviews the works of the Colectivo Acciones de Arte (CADA), the art action group that took the name used as the title of the article in question: Para no morir de hambre en el arte (To Avoid Dying of Hunger [or Starving to [...]

This is a short review of the play by the Italian playwright Ugo Betti: El delito de la Isla de Cabras (Crime on Goat Island), performed by the theater group Sociedad Venezolana del Teatro and directed by the Argentine director Carlos Gorostiza, who [...]

In this April 1964 magazine article, Marta Traba attests to Beatriz González’s artistic talents, reaffirming the decision by MAM (Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá) to exhibit the young artist’s work in a debut solo exhibition [...]

This is a brief letter from the writer Alberto Valdivia Portugal to Caretas magazine about the first prize recently awarded at the painting competition organized by the Festivales de Ancón. After (apparently) congratulating the winner, Luis Zevallos [...]

Juan B. Climent interviews Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, who leaves no doubt about his position regarding the figures of Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros in Mexican art. Lozano talks about the need to vindicate the native figure stemming from [...]

The art critic Juan Climent thought that Rufino Tamayo’s painting was caught in the crossfire of conflicting opinions. Some thought that his œuvre represented the decadent formalism of the School of Paris, but others saw it as the dawn of a new [...]

The text, “¿Arte joven?” [Young Art?] by art critic Eduardo Serrano Rueda introduces the exhibition Nombres nuevos en el arte de Colombia [New Names in Colombian Art] held at the Museo de Arte Moderno [Museum of Modern Art] in Bogotá in March [...]

In this text, Alfonso Castrillón argues that the conflict between “high art” and “folk art” is a reflection of class division, where the dominant class sets limits for low art by means of notions such as “individual creation” and “ [...]

This article was published in El País, a newspaper run by sectors of the Partido Nacional, one of Uruguay’s two traditional political parties. It reports on the occupation of the Subte exhibition space in Montevideo by a group of visual artists [...]

This interview consists of fourteen questions regarding the reception that the Mexican art exhibition experienced from the Parisian public. Fernando Gamboa believed that the event was a great opportunity for the Mexican people, and also was a great [...]

In the Survey Section, the journalist Ortega decided to go to the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria to ask the painters there the following question: Who is the greatest painter in Mexico? The caricaturist Ernesto García Cabral ironically responds that [...]

Argentine critic Marta Traba considers Puerto Rican artist Julio Rosado del Valle a key figure in Puerto Rican art because he was among those who paved the way for innovative approaches and experimentation in painting. She asserts that in the work of [...]

In this essay, the critic Roberto Guevara discusses the Cuban-born Venezuelan painter Rolando Dorrego’s career and latest work. Guevara begins with a review of the art movement of the early 1970s (in which Dorrego was an active participant), which [...]

In this document, Eduardo Ospina, a Jesuit priest, humanist, aesthete and director of the art pages section of the Revista Javeriana (Bogotá), wrote a review discussing the authorship of St. Jerome, [presumed to be] painted by the German painter, [...]

In this essay, Gustavo Buntinx analyzes emerging Peruvian art, seeing it as part of a process that began twenty or twenty-five years earlier. He speculates on “what were or claimed to be alternatives in Peruvian high art during Fernando Belaúnde [...]

In this lecture, Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar asserts that the ideological content of art is determined by its stance on society since “art for art’s sake” is devoid of ideological content. For Homar, “socialist art” is a question of [...]

The article “¿Feliza Krugman or Irene Bursztyn?” is the transcription of two texts read by Álvaro Medina on the program Orientación Plástica aired on Radio Nacional de Colombia on April 27 and May 3 (both Fridays), 1974. Medina accuses [...]

The researcher Irma Arestizábal comments on the placement of Argentinean avant-garde art, (always at the margin) in relationship to the hegemonic art centers. She writes based on a selection of works of Argentinean artists that appear in [...]

Antonio Rodríguez analyzed Rufino Tamayo’s work, basing his remarks on the retrospective of his paintings exhibited at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. According to the exhibition catalog, Tamayo’s greatest contribution was his handling of color. [...]

The writer Fietta Jarque discusses the possible reasons for the deterioration of the mural the Dutch artist Karel Appel painted on a wall in a shantytown in Lima that—despite the fact that it would have “cost many thousands of dollars had he been [...]

This text by journalist Mario Castro Arenas comments on the controversy surrounding the work Motociclista No. 3 by Luis Zevallos Hetzel, first prize winner at the painting competition organized by the Festivales de Ancón. The debate had widened [...]

In this article the journalist A. M. I. researches the field of special edition books. She interviews Luisa Palacios, the printmaker and director of TAGA (Taller de Artistas Gráficos Asociados) in Caracas, tracing the origins of this kind of [...]

Most of this short article consists of the words of the artist from Guatemala, Rina Lazo—a naturalized Mexican—from an interview with the critic Raquel Tibol. Lazo recalls her training and the reasons she came to Mexico in 1946. At that time, [...]

Puerto Rican writer Felix Joaquín Rivera interviews the artists Teo Freytes and Yrsa Dávila, who are both members of M.S.A. (Manifestación Sintetista Actualizada) [Manifestation of Synthetism Today], a nonprofit organization that provides space [...]

In this essay, which appeared in the catalogue for Veinte disecciones (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1982), the exhibition of works by Roberto Obregón, the researcher Susana Benko reflects on cultural symbols, conventions, and codes and the [...]

This article published in the “Lecturas Dominicales” or Sunday Readings section of the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo (April 1962) evidences the polemic surrounding abstract and figurative art in Colombia at the time. In the introduction to the [...]

There are five chapters in La Pintura de Héctor Poleo, Simón Noriega’s book about the Venezuelan artist. The one chosen here is chapter III, “El surrealismo de Poleo.” Section 4—“¿Reinterpretación o Mímesis?”—presents Poleo’s [...]

With this text, Colombian poet and essayist Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda introduces the exhibition of works by painter Manolo Vellojín held at Galería Garcés Velásquez in Bogotá in 1978. In Cobo Borda’s view, Holy Week (a Spanish religious [...]

This short essay by the French-Mexican critic, curator, and writer Olivier Debroise grapples with the phenomenon of neoexpressionist figurative painting in Mexico in the mid- and late-1980s. The author interprets appropriations of the official [...]

In the design ¿Y por qué no?, the artist Antonieta Sosa describes the action planned in detail. As she states it, this work consists of placing wine glasses on different parts of her body so that they will drop and break. Added to the sound of [...]

This article by C.A.D.A. (Colectivo Acciones de Arte) describes the group’s participation in the IN/OUT exhibition in Washington, DC. Due to the international nature of the exhibition, the text points out differences, provides some context for [...]

On the occasion of the exhibition La casa de todos nosotros: Antonio Martorell y sus amigos [A House for Us All: Antonio Martorell and Friends] held at El Museo del Barrio in 1992, Puerto Rican curator Susana Torruella Leval analyzes Antonio [...]

In this brief review Carlos González Bogen, a member of the Los Disidentes group, adopts a rather critical tone to discuss the negative aspects of an anonymous newspaper report—“De nuevo Los Disidentes,” published in the Márgenes column in [...]

In this article, published in November 1963, the Colombian journalist Gloria Valencia Diago interviews the Spanish artist Juan Antonio Roda, in connection with the exhibition of his oil painting series, Tumbas,at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogot [...]

In this essay, Roberto Guevara gives an overview of Gego’s career, [based on a selection of works that are] on display at the São Paulo Biennial. Guevara describes how Gego’s work has evolved from her early sculptures in the 1950s to her latest [...]

This brief article, illustrated by a large caricature, uses a humorous tone to comment on the disputes generated by the declarations of sculptors, who were unable to reach an agreement. “Instead of joining forces to fight the little dictator who [...]

This is the introduction to the catalogue for the Salón de Artistas Jóvenes Latinoamericanos [Young Latin American Artists Salon]—held at the Pan-American Union in Washington, DC in 1965. It was written by José Gómez Sicre, director of the [...]

Alfonso Castrillón defends the decision to recognize López Antay by granting him the Premio Nacional de Cultura [award], asserting that his work “is more authentic than the work of many so-called high artists, who have spent their whole lives [...]

This is Nelly Richard’s critical review of La pintura en Chile: desde la Colonia hasta 1981 (Painting in Chile: From the Colonial Period to 1981), the book cowritten by Milán Ivelic and Gaspar Galaz. Richard takes issue with a number of [...]

Pedro Nel Gómez, creator of the controversial frescos of the old city palace in Medellín, which at the time of this writing (2009), houses the Museo de Antioquia—explains his reasons for undertaking that major pictorial series. He also provides [...]

In this article, scholar Carla Stellweg discusses the position of New York as the world art center during the 1960s and ‘70s, which attracted many artists from Latin America who came eager to experience its artistic effervescence firsthand. Through [...]

In this essay, Eugenio Espinoza analyzes Dibujos sin papel [Drawings Without Paper], a series of works by Gego, a Venezuelan artist of German origin. Espinoza focuses on the works from that series created in 1985 as he explores the way Gego goes [...]

In this essay, which is the introduction to the book Ciudad–Espejo [City–Mirror] (2009), the Colombian critic Natalia Gutiérrez bases her review of Colombian contemporary art on the works presented at the 39 Salón Nacional de Artistas [39th [...]

In this newspaper article Juan Gargurevich criticizes the negative opinions expressed by the painter Juan Manuel Ugarte Eléspuru, who opposed the decision to award the 1975 National Culture Prize for art to the Andean altarpiece artist Joaquín Ló [...]

José Clemente Orozco did not publish any more political caricatures after the 1913 Decena Trágica [Tragic Ten Days]. This paragraph discusses at length the late-nineteenth-century transition from the end of the traditional press to the efficiency [...]

In this conversation between Nuyorican artist Papo Colo, and feminist performance artist Martha Wilson, Colo describes his performances from 1976 to 1986 in chronological order. The conversation with her provides succinct descriptions of the [...]

In this interview, the journalist Rubén Wisotzki asks Eugenio Espinoza about Orla, the exhibition presented at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofía Imber in Caracas, in 1993. The Venezuelan artist believes that the exhibition was a moment for [...]

Published in the magazine Imagen in 1969, this article by sculptor and teacher Pedro Briceño takes the reader into the universe of Gego’s Reticulárea. Briceño points out that Gego is an architect as well as an artist, and then describes the [...]

This essay, written by curator Susana Torruella Leval, provides a biographical overview of the careers of mural artist, Nitza Tufiño, and her father, Rafael Tufiño—a renowned Puerto Rican painter and printmaker. Leval describes the relationship [...]

By way of a brief interview, this text announces the opening of Bernardo Salcedo’s exhibition, Un mes de desahogos pasionales, at UD gallery in Parque de la Independencia in Bogotá. It explains that once the show is over, the works in it will [...]