Latin American Art

About

The term groups together countries with very different histories, languages and Indigenous cultures, and artists and scholars have long argued over whether a single label fits. It usually covers work made since the Spanish and Portuguese conquests, though ancient American art stands behind it.

The 20th century is where the label gained force. After the Mexican Revolution, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros painted public walls with national history, while Frida Kahlo turned inward in small self-portraits and Manuel Álvarez Bravo photographed Mexico with Surrealist strangeness. Wifredo Lam and Roberto Matta reshaped Surrealism. In Buenos Aires in the 1940s, Madí artists made paintings with irregular, shaped edges. Venezuela and Brazil became centres of geometric and kinetic art, and in the late 1960s conceptual artists across the region, including Cildo Meireles in Brazil, used everyday systems such as banknotes and bottles to carry political messages.