Conceptualism played a different role in Latin American art during the 1960s and 1970s than in Europe and the United States, where conceptualist artists predominantly sought to challenge the primacy of the art object and art institutions, as well as the commercialization of art. Latin American artists turned to conceptualism as a vehicle for radically questioning the very nature of art itself, as well as art's role in responding to societal needs and crises in conjunction with politics, poetry, and pedagogy. Because of this distinctive agenda, Latin American conceptualism must be viewed and understood in its own right, not as a derivative of Euroamerican models. In this book, one of Latin America's foremost conceptualist artists, Luis Camnitzer, offers a firsthand account of conceptualism in Latin American art. Placing the evolution of conceptualism within the history Latin America, he explores conceptualism as a strategy, rather than a style, in Latin American culture. He shows how the roots of conceptualism reach back to the early nineteenth century in the work of Símon Rodríguez, Símon Bolívar's tutor. Camnitzer then follows conceptualism to the point where art crossed into politics, as with the Argentinian group Tucumán arde in 1968, and where politics crossed into art, as with the Tupamaro movement in Uruguay during the 1960s and early 1970s. Camnitzer concludes by investigating how, after 1970, conceptualist manifestations returned to the fold of more conventional art and describes some of the consequences that followed when art evolved from being a political tool to become what is known as "political art."

"Beginning with the oil blowout in 1922 that is considered the moment that marked Venezuela's entry into a 'modern' era, Refined Material explores the integral relationship between Venezuelan oil industry and artistic production. In this groundbreaking study, Sean Nesselrode Moncada examines Venezuela's mid-century art and architecture in an argument that reinforces the inextricability of the rise of a capitalist and centralized state from life, activism, and art. Oil provided the crucible for national reinvention, ushering in a period of dizzying optimism and bitter disillusion as artists, architects, graphic designers, activists, and critics sought to define the terms of modernity. Looking at five different but interrelated case studies--a print magazine, a planned housing community, a luxury hotel, a kinetic museum installation, and a documentary film--this book brings forth a novel reading to the renowned Venezuelan modernist canon and reveals how the logic of refinement conditioned the terms of development and redefined our relationship to nature, matter, and one another"--

In the twentieth century, avant-garde artists from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean created extraordinary and highly innovative paintings, sculptures, assemblages, mixed-media works, and installations. This innovative book presents more than 250 works by some seventy of these artists (including Gego, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Xul Solar, and Jose Clemente Orozco) and artists' groups, along with interpretive essays by leading authorities and newly translated manifestoes and other theoretical documents written by the artists. Together the images and texts showcase the astonishing artistic achievements of the Latin American avant-garde. The book focuses on two decisive periods: the return from Europe in the 1920s of Latin American avant-garde pioneers; and the expansion of avant-garde activities throughout Latin America after World War II as artists expressed their independence from developments in Europe and the United States. As the authors explain, during these periods Latin American art was fueled by the belief that artistic creations could present a form of utopia - an inversion of the original premise that drove the European avant-garde - and serve as a model for

Alfredo Boulton (1908-1995) was Venezuela's foremost cultural and aesthetic observer of the 20th century. An art critic, cultural historian and photographer, he was highly influential in the development of modernist art and discourse, and of cultural self-definition, in Venezuela and the surrounding region. Boulton's diverse contributions serve as a point of departure in this remarkable selection of art-historical and critical texts by many of the prominent Latin American thinkers of this period, figures whose works and ideas helped to shape the face of contemporary Venezuela. Through the manifestos, correspondences and critical writings of these notable voices of the day, this anthology traces Venezuela's struggle toward modernity and toward a successful, autonomous identify on the international cultural scene. In addition to historical writings, the volume includes newly written critical and explanatory essays by contemporary scholars, providing context and insight to these significant texts that have become constant reference points for generations of artists, critics and art historians.

Duerme usted, señor Presidente? es el poemario que ha sido catalogado como la obra cumbre del escritor venezolano Caupolicán Ovalles. El texto fue publicado por primera vez en Caracas en 1962, por las Ediciones del Techo de la Ballena, principal grupo artístico y literario de los movimientos de izquierda y vanguardia de la Venezuela de mediados del Siglo XX. En 1973 fue reeditado por el MÁS y en 2010 por la editorial Mondadori. Actualmente, se encuentra disponible en digital en la web de El Perro y la Rana, y se espera su nueva publicación de la mano de la Fundación Caupolicán Ovalles, con motivo del 65 aniversario del poemario. Punzante y libre de convencionalismos, este libro revela la mirada crítica de Ovalles ante las labores (o, más bien, ante el adormecimiento) de la dirigencia política de entonces, encabezada por el presidente Rómulo Betancourt.​ Se trata del primer libro de poesía de este autor, y se encuentra integrado por cuatro poemas en los que dos llevan el título homónimo del libro. Los otros fueron titulados Muy triste, muy triste y Si en vez de dormir. Los versos de ¿Duerme usted, señor Presidente?, con figuras poéticas que oscilan entre la mofa y el lirismo, pretendían desnudar desde la palabra las inconsistencias del gobierno de Betancourt, con una mirada que atravesaba el crisol del inconformismo de los grupos de la izquierda venezolana. Su escritura está también regida en términos estéticos por el desarrollo de la vanguardia literaria, que nació a nivel global en respuesta al agotamiento de los cánones formales.3​ En el prólogo, el también escritor Adriano González León describió al ejemplar como «desusadamente adicto al desafío, aprovechando la materia hasta ahora denominada ‘no poética’, en un giro decididamente singular, porque existe una fatiga cuando se descubre la ineficiencia de la palabra tradicional, lo inoportuno del ejercicio culto, la triste invalidez de lo literario cuando ‘arrecia la enfermedad de vivir’».4​ En ese sentido, continúa, «en el caso de Caupolicán Ovalles, además del cansancio verbal, existen otras razones de fastidio, demasiado concretas, demasiado evidentes en nuestra hora hasta para el ojo menos alerta, que lo arrastran al abandono de toda preocupación correcta y normal por el lenguaje». El escritor, docente e investigador de literatura Miguel Marcotrigiano asegura que en el libro «la figura del ‘presidente de la república’ (así, en minúscula) aparece caracterizada en este poema como inconsciente, minimizada en su masculinidad, ignorante de la realidad, con aires de grandeza, demagógica y se le endilgan pecados como la gula, la soberbia, la avaricia y algunos más».​ Además, el autor concreta «Si entendemos por un clásico de la literatura la capacidad de trascender en el tiempo y espacio de un tiempo literario y la cualidad consistente en la adaptación a circunstancias similares, aún cuando ya no estén activas los contexto de origen, este poema, ¿Duerme usted, señor Presidente?, de Caupolicán Ovalles, constituye en cierto modo este concepto».

This edited volume examines the history of abstract art across Latin America after 1945. This form of art grew in popularity across the Americas in the postwar period, often serving to affirm a sense of being modern and the right of Latin America to assume the leading role Europe had played before World War II. Latin American artists practiced gestural and geometric abstraction, though the history of art has favored the latter. Recent scholarship, for instance, has focused on geometric abstraction from Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. The book aims to expand the map and consider this phenomenon as it developed in neglected regions such as Central America and the Andes, investigatinghow this style came to stand in for Latin American contemporary art.

Containing roughly 850 entries about Spanish-language literature throughout the world, this expansive work provides coverage of the varied countries, ethnicities, time periods, literary movements, and genres of these writings. Providing a thorough introduction to Spanish-language literature worldwide and across time is a tall order. However, World Literature in Spanish: An Encyclopedia contains roughly 850 entries on both major and minor authors, themes, genres, and topics of Spanish literature from the Middle Ages to the present day, affording an amazingly comprehensive reference collection in a single work. This encyclopedia describes the growing diversity within national borders, the increasing interdependence among nations, and the myriad impacts of Spanish literature across the globe. All countries that produce literature in Spanish in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia are represented, covering both canonical authors and emerging contemporary writers and trends. Underrepresented writings—such as texts by women writers, queer and Afro-Hispanic texts, children's literature, and works on relevant but less studied topics such as sports and nationalism—also appear. While writings throughout the centuries are covered, those of the 20th and 21st centuries receive special consideration.

In 1969, poet and revolutionary Margaret Randall was forced underground when the Mexican government cracked down on all those who took part in the 1968 student movement. Needing to leave the country, she sent her four young children alone to Cuba while she scrambled to find safe passage out of Mexico. In I Never Left Home, Randall recounts her harrowing escape and the other extraordinary stories from her life and career. From living among New York's abstract expressionists in the mid-1950s as a young woman to working in the Nicaraguan Ministry of Culture to instill revolutionary values in the media during the Sandinista movement, the story of Randall's life reads like a Hollywood production. Along the way, she edited a bilingual literary journal in Mexico City, befriended Cuban revolutionaries, raised a family, came out as a lesbian, taught college, and wrote over 150 books. Throughout it all, Randall never wavered from her devotion to social justice. When she returned to the United States in 1984 after living in Latin America for twenty-three years, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service ordered her to be deported for her “subversive writing.” Over the next five years, and with the support of writers, entertainers, and ordinary people across the country, Randall fought to regain her citizenship, which she won in court in 1989. As much as I Never Left Home is Randall's story, it is also the story of the communities of artists, writers, and radicals she belonged to. Randall brings to life scores of creative and courageous people on the front lines of creating a more just world. She also weaves political and social analyses and poetry into the narrative of her life. Moving, captivating, and astonishing, I Never Left Home is a remarkable story of a remarkable woman.

A sweeping analysis of the lasting effects of neocolonial extractivism in Latin American aesthetic modernity from 1920 to the present Looking to the extractive frontier as a focal point of Latin American art, literature, music, and film, Jens Andermann asks what emerges at the other end of landscape. Art in the Global South has long represented and interrogated “insurgent nature”—organic and inorganic matter, human and nonhuman life, thrown into turmoil. In Entranced Earth: Art, Extractivism, and the End of Landscape, Andermann traces the impact of despaisamiento—world-destroying un-landscaping—throughout the Latin American modernist archive. At the same time, he explores innovative, resilient modes of allyship forged between diverse actors through their shared experiences of destruction. From the literary regionalism of the 1930s to contemporary bio art, from modernist garden architecture to representations of migration and displacement in sound art and film, Entranced Earth tracks the crisis of landscape and environmental exhaustion beyond despair toward speculative, experimental forms of survival.

The first collection of the poetry of Juan Calzadilla to be translated into English, "Journal with No Subject" spans eleven books published from 1962 to the present. This poetry denounces the dehumanization of modernity, appropriates surrealistic language, questions identity and poetry itself, and dissolves the coherent, autonomous subject. Uniting political and aesthetic radicalism, Calzadilla ultimately reestablishes faith in poetry.