No less obsessive are Uruguayan Ricardo Lanzarini’s drawings, presented here by New York's Josee Bienvenu. Some of them are single sheets framed in the normal manner, but far more engaging in my opinion are the exquisite little cigarette-paper books from La Colecion JOB (2006) with their pages teeming with Lanzarini’s bizarre little humanoid creatures, rendered in ink and pencil shavings. $800 each. Remarkable.

Perhaps my favorite pieces in the entire fair, though, were Nadin Ospina’s politically charged sculptures at Galeria El Museo from Bogotá. Ospina traveled across Latin America on a Guggenheim grant working with the artisans who produce facsimiles of ancient stone sculptures for the tourist market. And with them he has produced wonderful hybrids of those sculptures and the characters of U.S. pop culture, primarily Mickey Mouse and his pals. Principe en extasis (2002), in which a tattooed Mickey sits atop an Aztec plinth, will cost you $20,000.

So, there is a lot to enjoy at Pinta, and some excellent buys, though it’s a real disappointment that you have to seek them around the edges, as it were, of the geometrical mainstream that galleries from clear across Latin America and many parts of the United States suggest is so depressingly dominant. Another big Latin American art event later this week is the opening of MoMA’s "New Perspectives in Latin American Art, 1930–2006" on Wednesday. I am very much looking forward to seeing it now, and particularly to discovering what those “new perspectives” are.