Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this interview, journalist María Cristina Sanhueza takes up the opinion of J. R. Guillent Pérez regarding the assertions of Oswaldo Vigas, which question the contribution of Los Disidentes [The Dissidents] (Paris, 1950) to Venezuelan art. After [...]

In this essay from 1983, art historian Aracy Amaral responds to ongoing debates on the pertinence of regionalism as a framing paradox for Brazilian art. She calls attention to the excesses of internationalism in certain of Brazil’s larger cities [...]

Ana Mae Barbosa points out the consequence of the internal diaspora of visual artists from Northeastern Brazil toward the major centers (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) starting in the 1960s. In her opinion, those artists were better prepared for a [...]

This text written by the art critic Icleia Borsa Cattani is the result of her in-depth research on the work produced in the 1980s, in her region, the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RGS), its distribution, and the market for that art. Her objective was [...]

In this study, Ladjane Bandeira argues that the movement for artistic independence in the state of Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil was an attempt to counter the influence of the European experience as “filtered” through São Paulo and other [...]

In Aracy Amaral’s view, the debate around the Etsedron group could give rise to reflection on a Latin American aesthetic insofar as it entails an expressionistic and primitivistic interpretation of reality from an environmental perspective. Amaral [...]

Olívio Tavares de Araújo introduces an exhibition of the work of Farnese de Andrade, an artist then known in Rio, but not in São Paulo. The writer brings up the strange nature of this artist from Minas Gerais, under the label of “mineiridad.” [...]

This anonymous article bemoans the failure of Assis Chateaubriand’s initiative to build regional museums in Brazil. The author does not blame Chateaubriand, a businessman based in São Paulo, for the failure, but instead focuses on the [...]

In this text, filmmaker Glauber Rocha describes the conditions surrounding life and culture in northeastern Brazil in the sixties, specifically in the desert-like region known as sertão. Lina Bo Bardi chose the text for the catalogue for an [...]

This article discusses the initiative to open regional art museums in key Brazilian cities other than the hegemonic centers of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The force behind the project was newspaper magnate Assis Chateaubriand who had [...]

[This text offers] perspective on Amazonian sensibility, through which the author proposes a radical shift by marginalizing the “elitist” focus. According to this vision, the history of the cultural production of that region has been “a tragic [...]

Poet Cecília Meireles discusses native art; which in her judgment ideally tells “history on a small scale.” She explains that Brazil is not homogeneous, as can be seen through its activities and techniques, which can be difficult to discern [...]

Walter Zanini offers a retrospective vision of the work of Vicente do Rêgo Monteiro, an artist from the state of Pernambuco, one year after his death. Professor Zanini’s far-reaching analysis provides context for a chronological understanding of a [...]

Joaquim Cardozo analyzes the work of Telles Júnior, evaluating his continual and almost exclusive dedication to the native landscape of the state of Pernambuco. The author affirms that the artist is a “regionalist” in good measure, and that he [...]

Antônio Franca distinguishes two great trends in his survey of Brazilian thought: traditionalism and “modernism.” He recognizes the continuity of these trends throughout the course of history, although in order to understand the Brazilian [...]

In this essay, author Gilberto Freyre examines the various phases of the life and artistic career of the painter Lula Cardoso Ayres, establishing a nexus between his art and origins from the social elite of the state of Pernambuco. He comments on the [...]

Gilberto Freyre identifies the seed of Brazilian regionalism in the Regionalist movement of Recife, which in his judgment was subtly preceded by Franklin Távora, Inglês de Sousa, Afonso Arinos, Alcides Maya, and reflected by Mário de Andrade and [...]

In 1951, precisely twenty-five years after reading his “Regionalist Manifesto of 1926” for the first time, the sociologist Gilberto Freyre still deemed the effects of regionalist expression to be visible. This was particularly true in journals [...]

In this essay, the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre reflects on the interest generated by things resulting from the inverse reason to their proximity. His inquiry led to the basic question of why had the northeastern region of Brazil not [...]

[In this text], the art historian Souza Barros (1903–1984) writes a naturalistic article based on documents and testimonials from the period. The writer describes the main aspects of the 1920s in the state of Pernambuco (Northeast Brazil) from a [...]

Writer Eduardo Campos defends future theatrical works with a “regionalist” theme. He suggests the use of themes linked to the Northeastern region of the country, where man’s struggle for survival (in a hostile and desert-like environment) is [...]

In “Regarding Regionalism According to a Specific ‘Point of View’”—chapter four of his doctoral thesis on the work of Glauber Rocha—Ismail Xavier analyzes the process that the filmmaker uses to bypass the concept of regionalist fiction [...]

This [text] is a “literary letter” sent by critic Joaquim Inojosa to the editors of Era Nova magazine in João Pessoa (in the state of Paraíba), which was later published as a book. It is considered a type of manifesto belonging to the Brazilian [...]

The synopsis in English are coming soon [...]

In this article, critic Sheila Leirner formulates the tie between the place where a work of art is produced and the work itself. In her view, artists can be divided into those who engage problems innate to art and those who make use of images for the [...]

Uruguayan critic Ángel Kalenberg praises the woodcuts of Uruguayan artist Carlos González. He asserts that González is to South America what José Guadalupe Posada was to Mexico, mainly, a pioneer in the realm of art. His pivotal series of prints [...]

This essay was included in the catalogue for the Exposição de Pintura Brasileira held in London in 1944. Organized by the critic Rubén Navarra, the show presented a broad selection of Brazilian paintings that covered the transition from the 1930s [...]

The editorial in the first issue of Arco & Flexa magazine sets the tone for the publication, and endorses both “tradition” and the Brazilian “modernist” movement, essentially because the latter is steeped in a universalism that also seeks [...]

Mário de Andrade, the writer and member of the Brazilian “modernist” movement—[this version of “modernism” had nothing to do with the literary movement headed by Rubén Darío that followed European avant-garde ideas]—described Tarsila [...]

Aracy Amaral comments in this essay on the term “Latin American” as an aesthetic category, which would suggest being identified as something different and also the need to search for universal values. This would be one of the paths: the denial of [...]

The author addresses the dangers, but also the need, to cultivate a Latin-Americanism, that is, she considers that Latin America without the information and the influence of the hegemonic countries in the art world (the United States and the [...]

This essay examines Latin American literature during two key periods. The first, up to 1930, was a period of passive awareness of the backwardness of the country, when people put great stock in the homeland and its geographical terrain, and were [...]

In his text, Luis Felipe Noé launches the following questions: Does a Latin American art exist? Should it exist? Taking into account what assumptions? What is the artist’s responsibility? Should an artist leave or remain in his country? In his [...]

Luis Felipe Noé writes an assessment of the artistic scene in New York in 1966. The city is the commercial center of the art world, although he judges it to be not the international center, but the national center of the world’s most important [...]

Luis Felipe Noé begins with the notion that the artistic milieu in which he operates is still in formation, just as the artists of the Grupo Buenos Aires come together through their relation with the societal background. In his judgment, art is just [...]

Luis Felipe Noé comments on various shows in Buenos Aires, from which he highlights the work of Leónidas Gambartes, while also classifying the themes of his work: the earth and its mysteries; the image of woman as closer to both the earth and its [...]