Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this poetic essay, which was included in the brochure produced for the Prêmio Leirner de Arte Contemporânea (Leirner Prize for Contemporary Art) in 1960, Décio Pignatari discusses the concept of “avant-garde” and [...]

This short article is a commentary on 1927: Exposición de Arte Nuevo, which opened on May 7 at the “Asociación de Pintores y Escultores.” In announcing and promoting the exhibition, the editors of Revista de avance stated [...]

In this article, the Cuban philosopher/historian Jorge Mañach carries on the debate about avant-garde art that he had started in two articles previously published by the journal. This time, the Revista de avance editor responds directly to what [...]

In this text, José Carlos Mariátegui argues that no avant-garde artistic or literary movement has been “as significant historically or important as content as Surrealism.” He asserts that, while Futurism attempted to go beyond formal [...]

In this article, the poet, painter and art critic Juan Calzadilla provides a broad historical overview of the major changes in Venezuelan avant-garde art, focusing especially on the shift from figurative schools to abstract and participatory [...]

The writer Adriano González León discusses the naming of the avant-garde group El Techo de la Ballena. His defense of the group’s use of the whale, a large animal that is not native to Venezuela, is really a pretext for a call for action in the [...]

This unsigned interview with Argentinean critic Jorge Romero Brest published in the weekly Jaque is somewhat alarmist. The main topics addressed—the decline of easel painting in the world over, the avant-garde experience at the Instituto Di Tella [...]

For the first time in Montevideo in 1971, three years after the artistically-political transformative event, called Tucumán Arde, took place in Rosario and Buenos Aires, Argentina, a comprehensive, all inclusive account was published. The one who [...]

Juvenal Ortiz Saralegui discusses Vicente Basso Maglio’s ideas about what the literary critic describes as “heroic expression,” with oblique references to the painting of another Uruguayan, Rafael Barradas. Based on literary ideas in particular [...]

This is a letter sent by the Uruguayan artist Pedro Figari to writer Alberto Zum Felde at the magazine La Pluma, which the latter directed. It is recognition by the famed artist, lawyer, and philosopher of the magazine’s cosmopolitanism, Latin [...]

The Boletín de TESEO is the newsletter published by the AAEU (Agrupación de Artistas y Escritores Uruguayos), the association of Uruguayan artists and writers whose memorandum of association appears in this Boletín Nº 1, Year 1, August 25, 1923. [...]

The artist Gabriel Morera; the writers José Balza, Jesús Enrique Guédez and Salvador Garmendia; the playwrights Román Chalbaud and Isaac Chocrón; and the graphic designer Nedo all make different statements about the relationship between the [...]

Curator María Luz Cárdenas discusses the magazine CAL, which was published from 1962 to 1967. Due to the ideology and cultural characteristics of CAL, Cárdenas considers it “the last avant-garde” effort to emerge in Venezuela. Cárdenas values [...]

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 [...]

“El surrealismo de Poleo” is the third of five chapters in Simón Noriega’s book La Pintura de Héctor Poleo. In the chapter’s third section, entitled “Poleo y la cultura figurativa de los años cuarenta”, Noriega reports that the [...]

This article by Juan F. Ballón is about the avant-garde revolution that took place in the 1930s in Peru, which he believes was inspired “by childish and propitiatory feelings.” He claims that despite its apparent utilitarianism, this movement is [...]

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 establishes a contrast between the bourgeois “sincerity of heart” and the “sincerity of the spirit” that characterizes the avant-garde. Ramiro Pérez Reinoso believes that this concept of the heart has been plagued by a “ [...]

The author describes the painter Emilio Goyburu as a “born revolutionary” whose originality was immune to “any academic approach, old or new.” According to Juan José Lora, Goyburu’s work is a “cinematic spectacle of awareness,” in [...]

This text is the editorial published in the first issue of Espacio, the journal launched by the Lima-based group of the same name in 1947. In it, the collective takes a radical stance in favor of the association of artistic and social avant-gardes. [...]

This article was written by Ramiro Pérez Reinoso who felt that the possibility of presenting a retrospective on the Cubist movement and its views “would not pale the increased hue of its modernity, seen in its last artists excited by its novelty [...]

In the introductory essay in the catalogue for the group exhibition Nuevas tendencias en la plástica peruana (1968), Juan Acha discusses the different views associated with the concepts of “universal” and “local” in developing countries. He [...]

This interview with painter and muralist Teodoro Núñez Ureta includes some biographical notes and photographs of his work space. Núñez Ureta asserts that the so-called “isms,” fruit of European decadence, contaminate painting in America. What [...]

This essay by writer and thinker José Carlos Mariátegui formed part of the “Peruanicemos al Perú” section of Mundial magazine. In it, Mariátegui questions the conservative position that sees the country’s tradition as colonial, Lima-based, [...]

This essay by writer and thinker José Carlos Mariátegui formed part of the “Peruanicemos al Perú” section of Mundial magazine. On the basis of developments in literature and art, Mariátegui underscores the nationalist bent of the avant-garde [...]

This essay by Peruvian writer and thinker José Carlos Mariátegui formed part of the “Peruanicemos al Perú” series published by Mundial magazine. Mariátegui asserts that an avant-garde movement has taken hold in the new generations in Peru, [...]

“Las vanguardias son impuestas desde arriba” is the title of an article published in Sobre arte, a transcript of a magazine interview with the Colombian artist Leonel Góngora in August 1977. The brief introduction to the interview criticizes the [...]

The poet and political thinker Gonzalo Arango discerns poetics in the artistic avant-garde that he invented and named ‘Nadaísmo’ [Nothing-ism] (1958–70), [which is] an art that “has no end, because it is infinite.” The Nadema artists [...]

The poet Amílcar Osorio Gómez—who, for many years, signed his work “Amílkar U.”—wrote the second manifesto for the nadaísta [Nothing-ist] group (1958–70), a predominantly poetic avant-garde association that coalesced in Colombia in the [...]

The archives of the Colombian photographer Julio A. Sánchez were studied by the artist and researcher Margarita María Monsalve Pino. She used them as the basis for a discussion of avant-garde art, with specific reference to photography in Colombia [...]

Signed by Nicaraguan poet José Coronel Urtecho (1906–1994) and eight other writers, including Joaquín Pasos Argüello (1914–1947) and Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912–2002), this document is the first manifesto of the Anti-Academia Nicaragüense [...]

In "El momento," Juan Marinello announces the existence of a new avant-garde movement in Cuban literature and the arts. Marinello prophesizes a coming “battle” between the new Cuban intellectual scene and the outmoded literary establishment who, [...]

This newspaper article on the “Manifesto tropicalista” reproduces the text of the proclamation in nine sections. It begins stating its open opposition to the generalized cultural inactivity and against syncretism and protest trends. It declares [...]

While this analysis of contemporary Brazilian art by Otília Arantes focuses on the period that spans from 1965 to 1969, it comments as well on the fifties, seventies, and eighties. For the sixties generation, Arantes argues, making art meant [...]

In this article, the architect and visual artist Sérgio Ferro criticizes the state of Brazilian architecture, especially in São Paulo, during the period in the 1960s, known as post-Brasilia. He takes a radical and critical approach by exposing the [...]

This account of the disbandment of the Grupo Rex asserts that the primordial aim of the São Paulo-based group was to say things that had never been said before, to criticize attitudes beset with bad faith, and to encourage the work of young [...]

Critic Frederico Morais discusses the transformations that took place in the Brazilian art world in the seventies, assessing the art market, art institutions, as well as important episodes that occurred during that period. Regarding artistic [...]

Looking through the prism of her philosophical education, Otília Arantes explores the different approaches taken as a result of the Brazilian political situation⸺following the military coup d’etat that installed an iron-fisted [...]

Carlos Vergara talks about his visual art, explaining that the material he uses in his work is not necessarily relevant in itself; it is more of an instrument, a vehicle for the direct transmission of reality. The artist from Rio de Janeiro explains [...]

This newspaper column by the critic Harry Laus includes a transcript of the manifesto written by some of the artists who participated in Opinião 66, the seminal exhibition held at the MAM-RJ (Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro) that year. The [...]

This is a poetic critique of Carlos Vergara’s work, written by Hélio Oiticica. The review posits questions concerning the history of Brazilian modern art in which Oiticica, referring to Vergara’s pieces, identifies what he calls a work of art’ [...]

Frederico Morais reviews Opinião 66, the exhibition presented at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro in 1966. He compares the exhibited works and the state of art in Brazil to the art being produced in France at the time, arguing that the [...]

This text on the Semana Nacional de Poesia de Vanguarda exhibition is anonymous, although it refers to the UFMG (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais). It highlights the importance of the genre within the evolution of art, stating its goal of [...]

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 article contains a survey carried out on the occasion of the exhibition Depoimento de uma geração [Statement of a Generation] curated by critic Frederico Morais. The show, which took place at the Galeria de Arte Banerj in 1986, intended to [...]

This essay sets out to analyze the evolution of Brazilian intellectual thought from the 1930s to the mid-1970s in order to identify the distinguishing traits of the transition from an aristocratic view of culture (the target of Mário de Andrade’s [...]

In this article, Frederico Morais claims that the defining quality of the avant-garde is its permanent openness to research and novelty. He thinks that the Brazilian modern, anticlassical attitude is the expression of a truly Brazilian mood that also [...]

Hélio Oiticica attempts to describe the Brazilian avant-garde’s views concerning an innovative phenomenon that clearly reflects the national character of the country rather than being an imitation of the North Americans or the Europeans. “Nova [...]

The critic Ferreira Gullar interviews the artist Ivan Serpa, who thinks that painting represents the contradictions of his contemporary world, which builds devices that are designed to destroy and others that allow mankind to float around in outer [...]

Aracy Amaral states categorically that there is no Brazilian style of avant-garde art because there never were any artistic groups that were large enough or able to provide an innovative groundwork. In Amaral’s opinion, the lack of a local painting [...]