Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

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

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 [...]

This article, published in Revista de avance in 1927, was written by the young essayist and journalist born in Catalonia, Martí Casanovas. Here, he sets forth a fierce criticism of the way the capitalist production system affects and determines the [...]

This document is the inaugural text issued by the editors and founders of Revista de avance and published in its first issue on March 15, 1927. Taking the form of a manifesto in a poetic, metaphorical style, the text links the emergence of the [...]

According to the author of this text, the works by César Moro on exhibit are aggressively disconcerting; indeed, there is “nothing to say about ‘things’ so removed from mainstream painting.” The author points out that, at this time, the [...]

This article about the Museo del Hospital Psiquiátrico Víctor Larco Herrera [Museum of the Victor Larco Herrera Psychiatric Hospital] (in Peru’s capital city) was written by Ernesto More, under the pseudonym “Jerome,” as part of a series on [...]

Poet César Moro describes the confusion and expectations of the public at the Surrealist art show, while also questioning the judgments pronounced on the show by “those charmers from the base police known as critics of purpose and profit,” whose [...]

This text announces the upcoming opening of the show of Surrealism organized by César Moro at the Academia Alcedo in Lima. The writer, who confesses he has not seen the show, comments that it is the first Surrealist exhibition to take place in the [...]

In this text, eminent Latin American avant-garde poet César Vallejo asserts that “among the symptoms of the final decline of the capitalist intelligentsia is the vice of coterie.” He argues that the crises of economic imperialism are reflected [...]

According to José Carlos Mariátegui, Breton (in his second manifesto) “prosecuted” all the writers and artists who, having initially embraced surrealism, then renounced it. Though he mentions the attacks on Pierre Naville, he claims that the [...]

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 text, Raúl María Pereira reflects on the history of painting in Peru, affirming that the Incan “genius in form and color” lived on despite the Spanish conquest, not as a parallel or marginal entity, but as a force that acted on “the [...]

In this text, José Eulogio Garrido speaks of his journey to Lima in order to see José Sabogal’s art in his home. Indeed, that was “one of the basic reasons I undertook the pilgrimage to Lima.” But Garrido saw only two works in the artist’s [...]

This article by José Sabogal is about the recent work produced by the Indigenist painter Camilo Blas. The author discusses Blas’ two scenes of Cajamarca that are to decorate the new Salón de Palacio, which opened in 1924 in celebration of the [...]

This militant text, published about a week after the inauguration of the exhibition sharing the title with the journal—1927, justifies the program of the radical artistic renewal that both the show and 1927: revista de avance proposed. The author, [...]

This letter, dated December 4, is the second one that Joaquín Torres García wrote to his student Rosa Acle (who was on her way to Australia) in 1939. The maestro’s comments suggest that he was feeling lonely following the breaking up of the group [...]

This is Joaquín Torres García’s first letter to one of his best-loved students, the Brazilian-Uruguayan artist Rosa Acle, who was traveling in the Far East at the time, on her way to Australia. In his letter, JTG admits that [...]

The IV Exposición Internacional organized by the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Montevideo, featuring painting, sculpture, and decorative arts, reflects the institution’s efforts to generate greater visibility in the community. The event’s other [...]

This article by Héctor Ragni—one of Joaquín Torres García’s “devout” disciples—reveals the author’s profound understanding of the maestro’s doctrinaire corpus of constructive universalism [...]

In this brief essay Joaquín Torres-García outlines the goals he developed at the AAC (Asociación de Arte Constructivo) and explained in the association’s magazine. He describes the difficulties he had in trying to make [...]

This article, “El arte naturalista y el arte geométrico,” includes a discussion of Joaquín Torres-García’s main theoretical ideas. Here he restates his metaphysically-inspired philosophical approach and his [...]

This is an excerpt from the book L’Homme, cet inconnu [Man, the Unknown] by the French scientist Alexis Carrel, which appeared in issue Number 5 of Círculo y Cuadrado, the magazine published by the Asociación de Arte Constructivo [...]

The author of this document, Edgar Varèse, criticizes the exploitation of folklore by “highbrow music.” He agrees that the indigenous spirit of ancient cultures can certainly be a source of inspiration for artists, but considers its manipulation [...]

“The plane on which we should place ourselves” is one of the most synthetic statements Joaquín Torres García makes in his lectures on the theory and practice of “modern classicism.” In it he casts some doubt on the very idea of “modernity [...]

Carmelo de Arzadun stresses the importance of creating intellectual groups in Montevideo, explaining that their conversations about their various aesthetic preferences would enrich the debate in local art circles. On the whole, the article does not [...]

In this article, the Argentinean-Uruguayan artist Héctor Ragni expresses his admiration for Joaquín Torres-García’s ideas and work. Ragni lauds the maestro’s motivational skills and recalls the first time he saw his [...]

Joaquín Torres-García wrote this editorial for Círculo y Cuadrado, the journal published by the Asociación de Arte Constructivo de Montevideo that seeks to follow in the footsteps of Cercle et Carré, the magazine co [...]

Five days after David Alfaro Siqueiros arrived in Montevideo, this article was published in El Ideal, a newspaper that supported the party that was in power at the time. The article includes statements made by the Mexican artist, who mainly discusses [...]

In this brief essay, Pedro Figari discusses his thoughts on the notions of “tradition,” “foreignization,” and “cultural appropriation.” His initial thesis is that a country like Uruguay, with almost no tradition of urban culture, is [...]

This letter from Pedro Figari dated Paris, January 1930, was written while the Uruguayan painter was still grieving over the sudden death of his son Juan Carlos (1927), and was preparing for the publication of Historia Kiria. In this letter to his [...]

This pamphlet was published by the Asociación de Arte Constructivo, an artists’ group created by Joaquín Torres García as a way to institutionalize his theoretical and practical ideas and lay the groundwork for a “movement.” There is a list [...]

This is the catalogue for the V Exposición de Arte (painting, drawing, and sculpture) held at the Círculo de Fomento de Bellas Artes de Montevideo in 1912. It was the second time that foreign artists, in this case from Argentina and Brazil, were [...]

Alberto Zum Felde discusses what is referred to as “nativism” in Uruguayan art (especially in the literary field). The writer and critic considers the movement to be epigonal and obsolete at a time when the presence of a new, cosmopolitan society [...]

This text is an analysis of the lecture given by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a theorist of the Italian Futurist movement. His topic was French-Uruguayan poet Jules Laforgue, who was born in Montevideo. The event took place in 1926, during Marinetti’ [...]

In this article, Orestes Baroffio discusses audience reaction to the lecture given by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the creator of the Italian Futurist movement and the author of its manifestos, at the Teatro Artigas in Montevideo. Baroffio also [...]

In this interview, painter and educator Domingo Bazzurro assesses Uruguayan painting and the role of the Círculo de Bellas Artes (CBA), which was founded in 1905 for art education and for activating the local art scene. That center of teaching and [...]

Uruguayan thinker, educator, and artist Pedro Figari—who had lived in Buenos Aires since 1920—supports the creation of the journal La Cruz del Sur in Uruguay in an article that reaffirms his stance against cultural colonialism. He also advocates [...]

This article analyzes the immediate repercussions of the victory of the Uruguayan soccer team, which won a gold medal at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. The team’s feat is compared to artistic accomplishments and the aspirations of artists; in a [...]

Alberto Lasplaces—the Uruguayan writer and journalist who developed a close friendship with Rafael Barradas before the latter went to Europe in 1913—wrote this letter to the Uruguayan artist when he was living in Hospitalet (Barcelona). He wrote [...]

This is the reply of Rafael Barradas to a letter he had received, authorizing his work to be shown in an exhibition on Uruguayan art in Buenos Aires. In the original letter, Domingo Bazurro, an art professor and president of the Círculo de [...]

In this second manifesto, Joaquín Torres García attempts to define the limits of constructivism’s philosophical field in relation to how much society does or does not heed it. He establishes “superior” and “inferior” categories of the [...]

Through a fictional text based on a dialogue between the exhibiting artist and some of the visitors, Joaquín Torres García builds a discourse with clear pedagogical intent. In it, he reiterates the basic concepts of his theoretical doctrine on [...]

This essay on Joaquín Torres García states that while he was in Paris and shortly before concretizing his Constructivist language as his own aesthetic doctrine, he created a vast number of drawings of the city that were artistically radical and [...]

In this letter, Joaquín Torres-García declares his intention to promote contemporary Uruguayan art to European audiences. The objective is to create a program designed to provide scholarships or grants from the Uruguayan government for [...]

This letter from Joaquín Torres García to his Uruguayan compatriot, the renowned writer José Enrique Rodó, suggests that both men agreed on the need to encourage the emerging art in their country by exposing young Uruguayan artists to what was [...]

In this letter to the writer José Enrique Rodó, Joaquín Torres García discusses the affinity they share for the Greco-Latin tradition, and expresses his wish to be in touch with contemporary Uruguayan art because, though living in Spain at the [...]

The Spanish author and art critic Manuel Abril was widely known as an admirer of the work of Uruguayan artist Rafael Barradas. This essay, originally written for the Catalan magazine Vell I Nou, outlines the artist’s predisposition for modernism. [...]

The essay by Vicente Basso Maglio was intended for the catalogue for the exhibition Rafael Barradas, organized by the Comisión Nacional del Centenario in Montevideo in 1930, a year after the death of the Uruguayan artist. [The artist was seen as] a [...]

The catalogue of the exhibition Exposición Barradas, organized by the Comisión Nacional del Centenario in Uruguay in 1930, included an essay on Artur Perucho that had already been published before by the Barcelona-based magazine Joia. The article [...]

While stating his unflinching loyalty to the communist cause, David Alfaro Siqueiros also provides some important autobiographical information in this letter to the Uruguayan Communist Party Central Committee. He talks about being under house arrest [...]