United by their belief in the importance of the human image in art, they distanced themselves both from the social realism of their predecessors and from the pure abstraction of many of their contemporaries. Shifra Goldman begins with a brief examination of the era and issues of muralism and the art of Rufino Tamayo. She then focuses on the confrontation between socially conscious art and "pure painting" that began in the late 1950s and resulted in the formation of Nueva Presencia.

This volume presents an overview of the social history of modern and contemporary Latin American and Latino art. This collection of thirty-three essays focuses on Latin American artists throughout Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The author provides a chronology of modern Latin American art; a history of "social art history" in the United States; and synopses of recent theoretical and historical writings by major scholars from Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, and the United States. In her essays, she discusses a vast array of topics including: the influence of the Mexican muralists on the American continent; the political and artistic significance of poster art and printmaking in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and among Chicanos; the role of women artists such as Guatemalan painter Isabel Ruiz; and the increasingly important role of politics and multinational businesses in the art world of the 1970s and 1980s. She explores the reception of Latin American and Latino art in the United States, focusing on major historical exhibits as well as on exhibits by artists such as Chilean Alfredo Jaar and Argentinean Leandro Katz. Finally, she examines the significance of nationalist and ethnic themes in Latin American and Latino art.

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.

Named a Best Art Book of 2017 by the New York Times and Artforum In South of Pico Kellie Jones explores how the artists in Los Angeles's black communities during the 1960s and 1970s created a vibrant, productive, and engaged activist arts scene in the face of structural racism. Emphasizing the importance of African American migration, as well as L.A.'s housing and employment politics, Jones shows how the work of black Angeleno artists such as Betye Saar, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Senga Nengudi spoke to the dislocation of migration, L.A.'s urban renewal, and restrictions on black mobility. Jones characterizes their works as modern migration narratives that look to the past to consider real and imagined futures. She also attends to these artists' relationships with gallery and museum culture and the establishment of black-owned arts spaces. With South of Pico, Jones expands the understanding of the histories of black arts and creativity in Los Angeles and beyond.