A catalog includes work by more than 300 Latin American artists

Frida Kahllo is one of the characters present in the catalog 'Latin American Artists from 1785 to Today'.

The catalog has been published by the Phaidon publishing house, specialized in design, architecture and plastic and visual arts.

Among the 308 protagonists that make up the volume there are 'classics' such as the Mexicans Diego Rivera or Frida Kahllo, but also nineteenth-century figures such as the Peruvian José Gil de Castro and members of generation Z (born between the last decade of the 20th century and the first of this XXI) like the Brazilian Paula Siebra, only 25 years old.

The selection, arranged alphabetically to favor its accessibility and limit possible biases, seeks to account for the “variety and vitality” of the art of the twenty Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking American territories, says Brazilian Raphael Fonseca in a video interview. who was part of the panel of 68 experts in charge of this edition.

Fonseca, art critic and author of the introduction to this work, vindicates the value of Latin American artistic production, sometimes overshadowed by American art.

“On an artistic level, the United States is considered the center of America. This leads to the rest of the countries on the continent, among which there is a very intense and fruitful dialogue, often being seen as something alien, as 'the other,'" he explains.

The “otherness” of Latin America, he believes, has led to the emergence of its own “art market” centered on the region’s own “narratives”; narratives often marked by the “colonial experience”, but which also reflect the “experimental impulse” of their artists.

“Our artists address explicitly Latin American themes such as inequality, cultural exchange or miscegenation. But they also explore art from experimental and universal keys such as pleasure, violence or fear,” he points out.

Fonseca, who studied in Brazil, lived in Portugal for two years and since 2021 has worked as a curator of Latin American art at the Denver Art Museum (United States), considers that the use of the term “American” in the United States has caused a “conflict.” nominal".

“The United States was established as such [United States] in 1776, but in 1901 it began to be called America. From that moment on, little by little a conflict arose between Latin America and ‘America’ around the name,” he writes in the catalog introduction.

Asked about the future, Fonseca trusts that Latin American art will open “in a majority and generalized way” to artists from the “working class.”

“The visual arts continue to be an elitist and restricted context. I hope that in the coming years, when we look at Latin American art, we will see a majority presence of working class artists,” he concludes.

Together with 'African artists since 1882' and 'Great women artists', 'Latin American artists from 1785 to today' makes up the 'Collection of Great Artists', with which Phaidon reviews the careers of more than a thousand artists from around the world in the last five hundred years.