Latin American Art History Flashcards

Flashcards covering key artworks, movements, and concepts in Latin American art history from independence to contemporary conceptual projects.

Portrait of Bolívar in Bogotá (José Gil de Castro, $1830$)

An oil on canvas depicting Bolívar as a civic icon of republican authority, helping construct nationalist identity after independence.

Portrait of José Olaya (José Gil de Castro, $1828$)

A formal state portrait of an Afro-Peruvian patriot that uses elite conventions to dignify a non-white revolutionary subject.

The Redemption of Ham (Modesto Brocos, $1895$)

A painting that visualizes the racist Brazilian "branqueamento" policy, showing whitening through generations as a form of national progress.

Inhabitant of the Cordillera of Peru (Francisco Laso, $1855$)

A work where the Indigenous figure is constructed through oppositions (Indian/Creole, Andes/coast) to become a symbolic foundation of the Peruvian nation.

Indigenismo

An artistic and political movement that links Indigenous subjects, traditions (like Día de los Muertos), and pre-Columbian heritage to national identity.

Woman from Tehuantepec (Saturnino Herrán, $1914$)

A representation of a Tehuana woman acting as a symbol of Indigenous femininity and mexicanidad, later central to Frida Kahlo's imagery.

Studies for Our Gods (Saturnino Herrán, $1914–18$)

A visual metaphor for Mexico’s mixed cultural heritage that synthesizes pre-Hispanic "Old Gods" and Spanish "New Gods."

Autochthonous Modernism

A style associated with Carlos Mérida that integrates Indigenous textiles and forms into flattened abstraction to create a modernism distinct from Europe.

Antropofagia

A concept of "cultural cannibalism" popularized by Tarsila do Amaral and Oswald de Andrade’s manifesto, suggesting Brazilians should consume European influence to create something unique.

Abaporú (Tarsila do Amaral, $1928$)

The central image of the Antropofagia movement, representing a uniquely Brazilian modernist identity.

A Negra (Tarsila do Amaral, $1923$)

A modernist representation of a Black Brazilian woman that connects race and Brazilian identity to international modernism.

The Jungle (Wifredo Lam, $1942–43$)

A gouache fusing Afro-Cuban spirituality with Cubism and Surrealism, used as a "Trojan horse" strategy to express colonial trauma.

Cuidado Comunal y Liberación (Giana de Dier, $2023$)

A contemporary collage that reworks colonial archives to recover and "restitch" the erased histories of Afro-Caribbean women.

Double Testimony

A term used by Mraz to describe how revolutionary photographs, like those of Adelita, function as both constructed icons and historical documents.

Ministry of Education Murals (SEP) (Diego Rivera, $1923–28$)

Fresco murals celebrating labor and revolution that established muralism as state-sponsored, revolutionary public art.

Man at the Crossroads (Diego Rivera, $1932–34$)

A Rockefeller Center mural destroyed because Rivera refused to remove an image of Lenin, representing the conflict between communism and capitalism.

A Few Small Nips (Frida Kahlo, $1935$)

An oil on sheet metal work representing gender violence by referencing both the retablo tradition and a newspaper crime story.

The Two Fridas (Frida Kahlo, $1939$)

A self-portrait exploring dual identity through the contrast between a European Frida and a Mexican Frida.

Broken Column (Frida Kahlo, $1944$)

A work using Christian martyr imagery and a broken Ionic column to transform physical pain into empowered subjectivity.

Brasília (Niemeyer & Lúcio Costa, $1960$)

A utopian capital city and architectural project that served as a state ideology for Brazilian modernization and democracy.

Synthesis of the Arts

A modernist cultural project, exemplified by the UCV Aula Magna in Venezuela, where architecture is integrated with murals and kinetic sculpture.

Bicho (Lygia Clark, $1962$)

An interactive aluminum sculpture, or "non-object," that requires the viewer to activate and transform it through embodied participation.

Parangolés (Hélio Oiticica, $1964–80$)

Wearable performance works activated through dance to break the boundary between the artwork, the body, and social life.

Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project (Cildo Meireles, $1970$)

A conceptual art project inserting political messages into capitalist systems as a form of anti-dictatorship resistance.

Una milla de cruces sobre el pavimento (Lotty Rosenfeld, $1979$)

A minimal conceptual street intervention in Chile that transformed road markings into political crosses to resist the Pinochet dictatorship.

Postmemory

An artistic theme dealing with the absence of disappeared people, where recreated photos or silhouettes serve as collective memorial images of state violence.

Atrabiliarios (Doris Salcedo)

A conceptual installation of shoes embedded in gallery walls, representing the partial concealment and disappearance of victims in Colombia.