Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In the following passages, Luis Felipe Noé reflects on the function and methods of art in the contemporary atomized society. He asserts that transformations of art imply a constant revolution. Today’s artists must examine and expose the [...]

This programmatic statement by the Grupo Arte Nuevo was included in the catalogue for their second exhibition, which ran from October to November 1966 at the MALI (Museo de Arte de Lima). Faced with “a world molded by the dramatic evolution of [...]

This article by the art critic Eduardo Márceles Daconte was published in the Sunday Magazine of the Bogotá daily newspaper El Espectador. The writer provides a brief account of the activities of the group El Sindicato, which emerged in Barranquilla [...]

“Brown Paper Report” is the manifesto of the Tejano [Texan-Chicano] San Antonio-based art collective Con Safo, written by artist Mel Casas in 1971. This short text presents the concepts of Chicano and “Brown Vision,” as well as the etymology [...]

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 [...]

Walter Sebastião describes the activities at the group studio (located in a shed in Belo Horizonte) where eight young contemporary artists work together. They all explore different techniques and languages, but share a preference for a density of [...]

In this text, Mario Ramiro comments on Construção Selvagem, a show of artists from Minas Gerais held at the Centro Cultural São Paulo. The author asserts that by bringing together various artists, group shows give rise to reflection and illustrate [...]

This text by art critic Alberto Tassinari addresses the group Casa 7’s participation in the 1985 edition of the São Paulo Biennial. One of the characteristics of the group’s new strain of research is, according to Tassinari, the “arrangement [...]

In this text, Julio Plaza questions the notion of the “Geração ‘80” that circulated widely in Brazil. Brazilian art criticism used that term to define new artistic production that differed from the experimentalism prevalent in the seventies; [...]

This is Tadeu Chiarelli’s critical text on the paintings created by Mônica Nador, written as the introduction to an exhibition by this Brazilian artist at the Luisa Strina gallery (São Paulo) in 1994. According to Chiarelli, these paintings are [...]

This is an interview conducted by the artist Luiz Paulo Baravelli with the painter Leda Catunda, who comments on two painting trends in São Paulo in the 1980s: subject and figure. She talks about her approach to art of the prior decade and cites the [...]

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 [...]

This essay describes the establishing of the photography club Foto Clube do Pará, naming its founding partners, the activities presented, and the postal addresses of its members. Around the mid-1950s, in the state capital of Belém, they opened a [...]

Artist Antonio Henrique Amaral comments on remarks that Czech philosopher and writer Vilém Flusser made about works from Amaral’s Campos de Batalha [Battlefields] series. Amaral objects to the commentary made by Dan Stancy that Flusser quotes in [...]

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 [...]

The manifesto that launched Rex Gallery & Sons in the city of São Paulo addresses in passing issues facing the visual arts in Brazil such as the paucity of galleries that support the production of artists, the lack of specialized art criticism, [...]

Nine texts published in the daily Correio do Povo during the month of September 1976 sum up eleven hours of recordings by the Grupo de Bagé (Carlos Scliar, Danúbio Gonçalves, Glauco Rodrigues, and Glênio Bianchett). All four artists, and Carlos [...]

This was the first press review to be published in Porto Alegre, the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, about a group of local “modernist” artists that became the Grupo de Bagé, later known as the Clube da Gravura [Printmakers’ Club] [...]

Painter Aldo Malagolia, a member of the Núcleo Bernardelli ---which by that date had all but disbanded--- remembers the history of the Brazilian group in this article. When it lost its headquarters, the Núcleo ran the risk of breaking up; which in [...]

Painter Quirino Campofiorito was the creator of Belas Artes, a publication in circulation in Rio de Janeiro. In this text, he provides a critical reading of an exhibition of paintings by [Alberto da Veiga] Guignard held at the Palace Hotel in that [...]

This is a text with a pronounced personal tone that was written for the purpose of erasing the line that divides an object from an interpretative reading of it. Frederico Morais pointed out a set of factors underlying the resurgence of painting at [...]

In his book Explode[AB1]  Geração! the art critic Roberto Pontual discusses his thoughts on the emergence of the generation that produced an “explosion” of painting in Brazil in the 1980s. Pontual writes in a very personal style, in keeping [...]

The art critic Roberto Pontual wrote this text for the exhibition 3x4 - Grandes Formatos organized in 1983 by the Centro Empresarial Rio. The essay’s confessional tone is nuanced by the author’s description of the driving spirit behind the works [...]

This is the introductory essay for À Flor da Pele [Skin Deep], the exhibition that the art critic Marcus Lontra Costa organized at the gallery in the Centro Empresarial Rio in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1983. It is an energetic defense of “ [...]

The painter Jorge Guinle Filho discusses the work of Victor Arruda, another painter of his generation. In Guinle’s opinion, Arruda’s paintings reveal a level of “poverty” in terms of their materials and their technique, a quality that became [...]

Luiz Camillo Osório sets out to identify those elements and/or characteristics that constituted Brazilian art at the beginning of the millennium. In his view, the exhibition Panorama da Arte Brasileira brings clarity and relevance to a type of work [...]

This essay by the critic Wilson Coutinho provides an assessment of the new artistic generation that emerged in the Brazilian artistic scene of the 1980s, starting with the retrospective presented at the Thomas Cohn Gallery in Rio de Janeiro with [...]

In his article, the artist Ricardo Basbaum suggests applying a more rigorous theory to the painting produced in the 1980s, especially in Brazil, with the specific goal of demystifying the so-called Geração 80. The author begins by establishing [...]

The young painter Jorge Guinle thinks the exhibition Como vai você, Geração 80? [How Are You Doing, 80s Generation?] provides extensive insight into the overall, and not just artistic, mood of the 1980s when the event took place at the Escola de [...]

In this chronicle by Enéas Valle, the artist/writer weaves a rhapsody that tells the story of the group called A Moreninha, of which he was a member (1986?87) in Rio de Janeiro. After providing the art background of Rio in the 1980s, the writer [...]

In this article, the young painter Jorge Guinle looks at how Brazilian painters of his generation—“Geração 80”—approach the image. He describes its characteristics in terms of a recent overview of art and a history that is mainly focused on [...]

In this article the critic Marcus Lontra Costa talks about the painter Luiz Áquila. Lontra begins with a discussion of the “spiritual” conditions involved in the so-called “return to painting” movement of the 1980s. According to the author, [...]

In this text, art critic Frederico Morais reviews the work of (José) Leonilson and his position, vis-à-vis what was known as Geração 80, making use of the artist’s personal testimony. After recalling a trip he made through Europe (including [...]

This long text by the art critic Frederico Morais, divided into 12 sections, described the mood of the art being created in Brazil in the 1980s. The emotions and pleasure were the main drivers of this new work, along with a celebration of youth. [...]

In this text, the art critic Wilson Coutinho comments on the eruption of a special moment in the Brazilian art world, starting with the exhibition Como vai você, Geração 80?,held at the Escola de Artes Visuais del Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro, 1984 [...]

The young Brazilian painter Jorge Guinle discusses the painting produced by internationally recognized artists of the 1980s (such as Philip Guston, Julian Schnabel, and Enzo Cucchi, among others), and compares their work to the legacy of early [...]

Published in the catalogue to the 18th São Paulo Biennial (1985), this text by critic Wilson Coutinho presents the work of artist Daniel Senise. Coutinho underscores the dramatic nature of Senise’s pictorial representations of simple objects and [...]

In a text about the work of Daniel Senise, critic Fernando Cocchiarale presents a reading of the retro tendency known as the “retorno à pintura” that took place in the eighties. Cocchiarale underscores the unique nature of the artist’s work. [...]

This is the art critic Marcus Lontra Costa’s essay about the painter Cláudio Fonseca. In his preamble, Lontra takes a close look at this contemporary artist and concludes that he lives in the moment, in a place where the only possible artistic [...]

In this article critic Wilson Coutinho emphasizes Luiz Áquila’s pictorial contributions to art in the 1980s. Known as “the father of the ‘80s generation,” he was one of the few to continue painting during the prior experimental decade. Á [...]

This document is a conversation between the painter Jorge Guinle and the critic Ronaldo Brito; the artists Carlos Vergara and Tunga are also part of the conversation. Focusing on the area he addresses in his ideas, Guinle discusses general aspects of [...]

Critic Marcus Lontra Costa takes stock of the eighties on the basis of the exhibition Como vai você, Geração 80? held at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro in 1984. Lontra Costa and his colleagues are particularly [...]

In this article, Barboza Leite identifies the artists who contributed to the founding of the SCAP (Sociedade Cearense de Artes Plásticas) from 1941 to 1949, when the association was launched. He provides a detailed description of the endemic [...]

Essay written by artist Nilo de Brito Firmeza (better known as Estrigas) about the role Mário Baratta played in the development of the artistic scene in the State of Ceará during the 1930s and 1940s. The author’s descriptions of the events of [...]

Mário Baratta references the quietness of the art world in Fortaleza, Brazil, the capital of the state of Ceará, during the dark period of the Second World War. He became acquainted with the Swiss artist Pierre Chabloz, who had settled there in [...]

Jean-Pierre Chabloz relates his experience in the state of Ceará (Northeast Brazil), a memory he closely links to his pencil and brush. He owes his encounters with artists in the region to drawing, and he believes the work he created then was the [...]

Aluízio Medeiros discusses the third Salão de Abril presented by the SCAP (Sociedade Cearense de Artes Plásticas). Medeiros recalls the assembly of artists and intellectuals that took place six years earlier in the city of Fortaleza. He explains [...]

In this article, Roberto Galvão provides a chronological timeline of the facts and institutions that contributed to the cultural state of Ceará in northeastern Brazil. He discusses the challenges that regional artists have faced in their attempts [...]

The essay “Traços Históricos do Desenvolvimento da Pintura em Fortaleza” [Historical Features of the Development of Painting in Fortaleza, Capital of Ceará] by Fátima Montezuma provides an overview of the history of art from the state of Cear [...]