Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this lecture, Martí Casanovas distinguishes the activities of the group of artists in the exhibition 1927 from those of other contemporary progressives by arguing that their art seeks to convey humanistic and collective meanings to a broad and [...]

In this commentary by Jorge Luis Borges on the book of poems by Manuel Maples Arce, Andamios interiors [Interior Scaffolding], published in the latter half of 1922, the Argentine writer contrasts his urban vision of poor neighborhoods against the [...]

While the first issue of Actual contained a directory of avant-garde artists, this third issue held an index of avant-garde books and magazines. Listings include: La vie des lettres, a French magazine begun in 1913 and headed by Nicolas Beauduin; an [...]

After denying the existence of “Estridentista art,” the writer Arqueles Vela indicates his group’s affinity with Abstractionism and with “pure art,” which in his view was considered a condensed expression of modern life, a way of overcoming [...]

Irradiador magazine—subtitled, “Avant-garde magazine: an international project devoted to the new aesthetic, directed by Manuel Maples Arce & Fermín Revueltas”—was published in Mexico City in 1923. El restorán [The Restaurant], a [...]

During the inaugural ceremony for Diego Rivera’s mural, La creación [Creation], the poet Manuel Maples Arce described the painter as the prototype of the Estridentista artist who would lead the charge on behalf of the insurrection of the visual [...]

Ramón Alva de la Canal painted the first version of El Café de Nadie [No Man’s Café] in 1924. After it disappeared, he decided to paint the scene again, but this time he introduced some new elements. To illustrate it, he included the names of [...]

This stylized painting portrays some of the members of the Estridentista movement in their meeting place: El Café de Nadie [No Man’s Café]. Manuel Maples Arce is in the upper center of the picture, flanked by both Germán List and Salvador [...]

In Ciudad Victoria (Tamaulipas), Miguel Aguillón Guzmán issued a fourth Estridentista manifesto in which the delegates to the III Congreso Nacional de Estudiantes [3rd National Students’Conference] affirm their “support for the Mexican [...]

Salvador Gallardo issued a third Estridentista proclamation in 1925 in the city of Zacatecas that echoed the formal language used by Manuel Maples Arce, the founding father of the trend, Estridentismo. It consisted of a repetitive litany, expressed [...]

In the same year that the Estridentista manifesto was written, Manuel Maples Arce recounts the progress of both the literary and artistic avant-gardes in Mexico observing that indeed: “the few intellectuals who joined the revolution were corrupt [...]

On the orders of the Mexican Under Secretary of Education, Bernardo J. Gastélum (the office manager), confirmed the dismissal of all the Etridentista painters who—led by Diego Rivera—had painted murals on the walls of the annex of the SEP, the [...]

Diego Rivera’s mural La Creación [The Creation] was unveiled during a showing at the amphitheater of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria de México—with the assistance of the painter and the Minister of Public Education, José Vasconcelos. After [...]

This is the poster-manifesto that gave rise to the Estridentista movement in Mexico. Manuel Maples Arce, a poet born in Xalapa (Veracruz), launched his avant-garde publication Actual as a provocation directed against the acclaimed literary figures of [...]

This book takes as its subject a series of lectures held in 2000. It constitutes the first documentary account of the contributions of the visual artists who were involved in the Estridentista movement avant-garde and its relation to the urban scene [...]

Luis Mario Schneider carried out the first documented study on Etridentismo; he interviewed the members of the group and thoroughly examined the archives of this 1920s avant-garde movement. Although the group left some accounts to history, this was [...]

This document is an anthology containing a collection of etridentista poems and manifestos. It includes an extensive bibliography. Luis Mario Schneider [L. M. Sch.] contextualizes their works within the cultural panorama of that time [...]

Baciu produces a panorama of the work by French painter Jean Charlot, from his early links to his country’s avant-garde and his integration into the first Mexican muralist movement, through to his relationships with the Estridentista movement and [...]

Five years after their first manifesto Actual [see doc. 737463 and doc. 754048], Germán List Arzubide recounted the early activity of the estridentista group. The author began with a description of the group’s leader, the poet Manuel Maples Arce. [...]

Showing its affinity with the ideas of Estridentismo, the magazine Ser reproduces on its cover an ideographic portrait that captures the psychological image of Manuel Maples Arce, a “champlave” [sic] of Jean Charlot, which through its fragmented [...]

Manuel Maples Arce traces an overview of the sculptor Germán Cueto’s avant-garde œuvre, in Mexico as well as in Spain, followed by Cueto’s collaboration with the estridentista movement, his later stay in Paris and his return to Mexico. He [...]

The Chilean poet Vicente (Ruiz) Huidobro explains the effects of the elimination of punctuation due to the spatial cuts proposed by Creationism. With regard to this trend, he also lists the movement’s representatives, their publications, and their [...]

This article relates a conversation between Vicente Ruiz Huidobro and his Chilean countryman, Ángel Crughaga Santa María, in which the latter relates Huidobro’s literary activities in France after he founded the magazine Nord-Sud with Pierre [...]

Based on this description by the chronicler of Estridentismo and director of the magazine Horizonte, Germán List Arzubide, said publication was sponsored by the revolutionary government of the State of Veracruz. The magazine got its impulse from the [...]

In this text, the poet Manuel Maples Arce connects the use of the “sidero-cemento” [iron and steel cement] to geometric purity, monumentality, and the workers’ progress. He writes about the construction system of primitive peoples and [...]

This is a summing up, by one key figure of the estridentista movement and of its impact, in spite of the small size of the group. Germán List Arzubide recounts, twenty years later, what Estridentismo consisted of, how the movement started as a [...]

Metropolis —a translation written by John Dos Passos of Urbe—Bolshevik Super Poem in Five Cantos is a collection of poems dedicated to the workers of Mexico, in which Manuel Maples Arce shapes his conception of a city, at the same time [...]

The magazine Horizonte [Horizon] had excellent cover designers such as Leopoldo Méndez and Ramón Alva de la Canal. Canal was the one who created this cover as well as many vignettes, all of which were very well sketched [...]

This is the second manifesto made public by a new estridentista front located in the city of Puebla. This manifesto makes fun of the local literary glories, but especially of the patriotic values with such deep roots in that city, such as the hero of [...]

This is the frontispiece of the book of poems El viajero en el vértice [The Traveler at the Vortex] (1926) by Germán List Arzubide, one of the key figures of estridentismo. Both the cover as well as the vignettes of this collection of poems were [...]

This is a book of poems which attempts a synthesis of the avant-garde, the city, and the workers’ revolution. The idea that prompted Manuel Maples Arce’s composition of the poems in Urbe was to “provide an aesthetic intention to the Revolution [...]

This is a poetic review tracing the history of the invention of that meeting place taken over by the Estridentista movement. They consider it their meeting place for appropriate get-togethers, their planning quarters for their actions against [...]

Based on the criticisms that the emergence of Estridentismo gave rise to, Oscar Leblanc, a journalist of El Universal Ilustrado carries out a survey about the movement, interviewing several personalities. The responses are really extreme. The writer [...]

This is an interview in which Manuel Maples Arce, the founding father of Estridentismo movement, explains his most recent avant-garde battleground set at the bookstore Librería de César Cicerón and the new aesthetics announcement of what is being [...]

This text establishes Diego Rivera’s importance as the head of the Mexican estridentista movement in the arts. It announces the creation of the Salón Independiente, a strategic exhibition space for the avant-garde in Mexico, on which he gives no [...]

This is a partial summary of the first estridentistaparty with masks, paintings, watercolors, and drawings on walls. Arqueles Vela participates by telling about the history of that meeting space; in addition there are poetic interventions such as [...]

This is the manifesto poster that gave rise to the Estridentista movement in Mexico. The poet Manuel Maples Arce issued the leaflet Actual as an aggressive vexation against the consecrated personalities of the literary milieu; said proclamation was [...]