Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

Journalist Leonor Amarante wrote this article on the artistic career of Dudi Maia Rosa on the occasion of a group show in Germany, the first one in which the artist participated (1988), at the age of forty. Amarante places emphasis on the “balance [...]

This text summarizes artist Regina Silveira’s position in a debate held at the Galeria São Paulo in December 1981 on the state of printmaking in Brazil in the early eighties. Early on, Silveira asserts that in her view, the idea that printmaking [...]

The art critic José Geraldo Vieira reviews the history of Surrealism and mentions Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, and William Hogarth, among others. In the critic’s opinion, these artists created a “cosmogony of the absurd” centuries ahead [...]

According to Carlos Scarinci, the poetics of Cláudio Mubarac’s prints create a conflict between surface and depth; he refuses to treat paper as a simple support or to use it in an iconographic or formal way. Scarinci believes that the cut made to [...]

Aníbal Machado writes about the printmaker Oswaldo Goeldi, noting his “moral profile,” his “impetuous temperament,” his humble, melancholy nature, and his “artistic solitude.” Machado describes Goeldi’s childhood in Belém (in the [...]

Ariano Suassuna explains that traditional printmakers in northeastern Brazil took their inspiration from medieval Iberian stories and ballads, capturing a fantasy world in literary works and prints that teemed with action, enchantment, and deep- [...]

In this text, professor, art historian, and critic Quirino Campofiorito offers an overview of Brazilian sculpture from the 1930s through the 1960s. In passing, he comments on the modernization process undertaken by Brazilian art, generally in open [...]

Olívio Tavares de Araújo introduces an exhibition of the work of Evandro Carlos Jardim, an artist he considers serious, upright, and aware of long-term standards in art. The writer notes that this was the first time the artist would be showing [...]

Annateresa Fabris questions the status of the image in contemporary art in the context of the exhibition Gravura Paulista. Fabris begins the text by referring to film, which she considers the vision of those who cannot forge a relationship with the [...]

In this text, Tadeu Chiarelli examines the meaning of printmaking in contemporary art. It adds nothing on a technical level, he argues, and—as the medium used for the reproduction of images in post-industrial society—it is brought into the sphere [...]

With this text, Tadeu Chiarelli presents a show of work by Cláudio Mubarac. He observes how metal engraving becomes a process of self-knowledge in the hands of an artist influenced—in Chiarelli’s view—by Evandro Carlos Jardim. Printmaking and [...]

In this critique ---which has a biographical tenor--- of the work of engraver Darel Valença Lins, poet and diplomat Vinicius de Moraes juxtaposes Darel’s origins with those of writer José Lins do Rego.  Although both were raised near sugar [...]

In this essay, Ferreira Gullar states that the artist Antonio Henrique Amaral makes a radical cut into reality to show its cruelty. He points to transformations in his etchings that make more evident certain political events. In his work, symbols are [...]

This essay, written by the art critic Roberto Pontual, is a biographical and artistic profile of the artist Roberto Magalhães, in which the author underscores Magalhães’ penchant for working independently from his colleagues in the Nova Figura [...]

This is a monograph about the work of the nineteenth-century printmaker and painter Pedro Weingärtner. The author reviews the artist’s career, which started in a (family) lithography studio in Porto Alegre (the capital of the state of Rio Grande [...]

Carlos Scarinci writes about the early days of printmaking in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. He also mentions the artist Pedro Weingärtner, whose pioneering graphic works attracted attention at a national level. Weingärtner produced his first [...]

In this essay the art critic Roberto Pontual discusses xylography, or woodcut printing, describing it as “basic creativity,” a term he considers more appropriate than “folk art.” He notes the lack of studies on the subject and mentions the [...]

In his review of Oswaldo Goeldi’s exhibition at the Salão do Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro, Campofiorito asserts that Goeldi is a unique artist insofar as his work is extremely accessible to critics, yet [at the same time], [...]

This is the leaflet produced for the exhibition of works by the German printmaker Hansen-Bahia that was shown in the cities of Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Porto Alegre. In addition to reproductions of the artist’s [...]

This text by Wilson Rocha discusses the retrospective of printmaker Henrique Oswald that took place in the context of the Primeira Bienal Nacional de Artes Plásticas held in the city of Salvador, state of Bahia, in 1966 and 1967. Rocha considers [...]

Beginning at the end of the 1940s, writer Riolan Metzker Coutinho traces a history of wood engraving in the state of Bahia, which in his judgment, is a privileged endeavor in which engravers such as Oswaldo Goeldi, Poty Lazzarotto and Carl Hansen ( [...]

In this text, José Valladares remarks on the show of prints by Brazilian artist Poty Lazzarotto held in the city of Salvador, in the state of Bahia, in 1950. Valladares sheds light on Lazzarotto’s professional training and the range of techniques [...]

Written in 1966, the essay “Raimundo Cela: um pioneiro esquecido” [Raimundo Cela: A Forgotten Pioneer] refers to the “oblivion” into which the artist’s work has fallen, and discusses the artistic qualities of his work, particularly the [...]

This brief text is about the art of woodcut printing and its traditional use in the genre of “cordel literature” (or string literature) in northeastern Brazil. The author, Barboza Leite, notes its increasing recognition as an artistic language. [...]

The Brazilian artist Sérvulo Esmeraldo talks about his interest in popular printmaking, and discusses the important effect that this artistic language had on his work during a visit to Carirí, in his home state of Ceará (1954). While there, he [...]

“Engenho e Arte. A Fala dos Gravadores” [Ingenuity and Art: The Speech of the Engravers] is one of seven chapters of a book by Gilmar de Carvalho entitled Madeira Matriz, a subject he developed in a doctoral thesis done at Pontifícia [...]

This text is the preface by Eduardo Menezes to the book Xilógrafos de Juazeiro, which addresses the use of woodcuts in northeastern Brazil, particularly in representations of the tension between dominant and subaltern cultures. The author briefly [...]

In this article, the art critic Lourival Gomes Machado elaborates on the work by Francisco Rebolo and Clóvis Graciano. It is significant, in his opinion, that both artists would start their artistic careers ten years after the Semana de 1922,thus [...]

This article is about the emergence of a group in São Paulo in 1993 that called itself the “Atelier Piratininga.” The members of the group were Ernesto Bonato, Armando Sobral, and Giorgia Volpe. In their early days they were mainly focused on [...]

This bound and offset printed leaflet reflects the joint efforts of two groups of Brazilian artists—Espaço Coringa and Projeto Aberto—whose goal was to stimulate activities targeting “Public Arts, Contextual Art, and the Social Artist,” as [...]

This text presents “Espaço Coringa,” an eight-member art collective based in São Paulo. The main focus of the group’s work is graphic art that involves the public space [...]

A letter written in 1985 by José Moraes to Evandro Carlos Jardim is reproduced here. It recounts the brief history of the end of “etching lessons.” Moraes tells him about the correspondence he maintains with the artist Carlos Oswald who, in [...]

In this article Marjorie Devon, the director of the Tamarind Institute in the United States, lists the Institute’s various exchange programs with Brazilian artists who work in the field of lithography. Cláudio Mubarac, Iran do Espírito Santo, and [...]

This document is an anthology of poetry from the region of Bezerros, in the state of Pernambuco, which includes about 50 poems and stories from the genre known as “literatura de cordel” (string literature). This form of literature consists of [...]

The art critic Frederico Morais maintains that the print is “one of the last refuges of the visual arts” from the emergence of the new avant-gardes throughout the 1960s, in particular, Pop art. In this text, the print turns out to be the [...]

In this introductory article, the curator and journalist Teniza Spinelli outlines the genealogy of print clubs in Brazil, beginning with the Grupo de Bagé (1948), and moving on to the Clube de Gravura de Porto Alegre (1950), which was the model for [...]

In this brief article, the critic Jayme Maurício outlines the history of the Atelier de Gravura em Metal, the workshop at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro). This involved a process that began in 1955 with the ambitious project [...]

This article by the artist João Câmara Filho celebrates the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Oficina Guaianases de Gravura, the print shop in Olinda, Pernambuco. The author describes the origins and activities of the nonprofit organization [...]

This article, essentially the minutes of a meeting of the Cooperativa de Artistas Plásticos de São Paulo, was published in ABC Color, the organization’s newspaper. The article reports on the meeting of Cooperative members on July 2, 1980, at [...]

Geraldo Ferraz’s text describes the different phases of Lívio Abramo’s engraving, starting with the work he produced in 1933 (based on drawings he created between 1926?27). The type of “Expressionism” out of which those works emerged was [...]

With a brief historical sketch of wood engraving, “the most authentic medium within the visual languages,” the author establishes connections between expressionist art —such as the Brücke [Bridges], Blaue Reiter [Blue Rider], and Sturm [Storm [...]

In order to emphasize the differences between the art life of the Brazilian printmakers Oswaldo Goeldi and that of Lívio Abramo, the writer focuses on Abramo. For Goeldi, time well spent took place on the beaches of South Rio (a tourist area) such [...]

In this text, José Neistein presents artist Lívio Abramo as a virtuoso of wood engraving within the context of Brazilian art. Characterized with refinement and precision, in the author’s judgment, his work diverged from Expressionism in order to [...]

The introduction in the catalogue for Lívio Abramo’s retrospective, written by Alcídio Mafra de Souza, suggests certain connections between the Brazilian artist’s graphic works and the German Expressionism led by two groups: Die Brücke [The [...]

In 1989, the Boletin no 1, published by the Museu da Gravura de Curitiba (sponsored by the Fundação Cultural de Curitiba), included this speech, entitled “O Pioneirismo da Gravura,” which the Brazilian printmaker Lí [...]

In this nuanced essay, the artist Fayga Ostrower writes about the theoretical aspects of the prints produced by Lívio Abramo, the Brazilian engraver, especially with regard to the representation of psychological and biographical themes. [...]

This chapter by José Neistein examines the engraving of Lívio Abramo (1903?93), as seen in Brazil in the context of the work by other engravers such as Oswaldo Goeldi and Lasar Segall. Neistein identifies them as the pioneers of Brazilian engraving [...]

To the art critic Geraldo Ferraz, Lívio Abramo’s artwork departs from a drawing that then gradually begins to give way to “expressionist manipulations” etched on “bad” wood. Towards the end of the thirties, Abramo, who was a journalist, [...]

The artist Lívio Abramo launches into his essay with some reminiscences about the time he spent with the journalist and writer Geraldo Ferraz when they both worked at the Diário da Noite, and about the illustrations he produced for Pelo [...]

Starting his essay focused on drawing in the work of Lívio Abramo, Arnaldo Pedroso d’Horta deems this skill fundamental to the visual arts. In the writer’s opinion, Abramo’s daily drawings (reportorial, rather than personal) incorporate his [...]