Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This text is the message delivered by painter Sérvulo Gutiérrez to the first convention organized by the Asociación Nacional de Escritores y Artistas (ANEA); the event was held in Lima in September 1955. In his statement, Gutiérrez asserts that, [...]

This critical essay by João Luiz Lafetá examines Brazilian modernism by distinguishing the “aesthetic project” from the “ideological project” of the literary production during the 1920s and 1930s. The author creates a dialectical division [...]

Mário de Andrade begins this text by questioning the term “architecture” and its meaning. In his view, architectural laws obey both the laws of nature and the laws of humans that lead to arbitrary personal impulses. He establishes a difference [...]

This article stresses the need to establish the parameters of Latin American art events and think about the criteria used to judge them. It also discusses a question that defines the idea of “regionality,” a concept that is closely associated [...]

The catalogue for I Salão, the exhibition sponsored by the Feira de Indústrias, includes essays written by the organizers of the event: Elias Chaves Neto, Vittorio Gobbis, and Quirino da Silva. Gobbis talks about the meaning of art and [...]

In this article, Mário de Andrade discusses Cândido Portinari’s painting, and explains that his heterogeneity of styles, aesthetic and technical concepts and, of course, virtuosity are integral components of the drama of being a contemporary [...]

In this article, the writer Mário de Andrade discusses the photomontages of poet Jorge de Lima. In the opinion of de Andrade, photomontage can be considered a new medium for lyrical expression and an introduction to modern art. He thinks that those [...]

Starting with this issue, working alongside Guilherme de Almeida, Homero Prates assumed the role of literary editor of the journal Panoplia. In his text, Prates points out the nationalist feelings circulating at the time in Brazil. This outlook set a [...]

This article denounces the director of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, Ángel Vallarino, for suspending, by order of the Secretario de Educación Pública [Minister of Public Education], a group of students. The students were suspended for [...]

In his position as the vice-president of the Sociedad Argentina de Artistas Plásticos (SAAP), the artist Ignacio Colombres sent a letter to the director de Artes Plásticas del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella; in it he condems the closure of one of the [...]

Libero Badii explains that his transition from sculpting to painting demonstrated that he was an artist in his prime. According to him, painting could express the communicative meaning of his work. He mentions the "sinister" sense of his artistic [...]