Latin American art
Encyclopedia
Mexican art
Mexican art consists of the various visual and plastic arts which developed over the geographical area now known as Mexico. The development of these arts roughly follow the history of Mexico, divided into the Mesoamerican era, the colonial period, with the period after the gaining of Independence...
, as well as Latin American living in other regions.
The art has roots in many different indigenous cultures
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
that inhabited the Americas before the European colonization in the 16th century. The indigenous cultures each developed sophisticated artistic disciplines, highly influenced by religious and spiritual concerns, and their work is collectively known as Pre-columbian art
Pre-Columbian art
Pre-Columbian art is the visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, North, Central, and South Americas until the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and the time period marked by Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas....
. The blending of Native American, African and European cultures has resulted in a unique mestizo tradition.
Colonial Period
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
traditions and European influences (mainly due to the Christian teachings of Franciscan
Franciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
, Augustinian and Dominican
Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...
friars) produced a very particular Christian art known as Arte Indocristiano. Beyond the tradition of indigenous art
Native American art
Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic traditions of the indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present...
, the development of Latin American visual art owed much to the influence of Spanish, Portuguese
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
and French Baroque painting, which often followed the trends of the Italian masters.
The Cuzco School
Cuzco School
The Cuzco School was a Roman Catholic artistic tradition based in Cusco, Peru during the Colonial period, in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries...
is regarded as the first center of European-style painting in the Americas. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Spanish art instructors taught Quechua artists to painting religious imagery after classical and Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
-styles.
Modernism
ModernismModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, a Western art movement typified by the rejection of traditional classical styles, holds an ambivalent position in Latin American art. Not all countries developed modernized urban centers at the same time, so Modernism's appearance in Latin America is difficult to date. While Modernism was welcomed by some, others rejected it. Generally speaking, the countries of the Southern Cone
Southern Cone
Southern Cone is a geographic region composed of the southernmost areas of South America, south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Although geographically this includes part of Southern and Southeast of Brazil, in terms of political geography the Southern cone has traditionally comprised Argentina,...
were more open to foreign influence, while countries with a stronger indigenous presence such as Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia were resistant to European culture.
A landmark event for Modernism in the region was the Semana de Arte Moderna or Modern Art Week, a festival that took place in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1922, and marks the beginning of Brazil's Modernismo movement. "[T]hough a number of individual Brazilian artists were doing modernist work before the Week, it coalesced and defined the movement and introduced it to Brazilian society at large."
Constructivist Movement
In general, the artistic EurocentrismEurocentrism
Eurocentrism is the practice of viewing the world from a European perspective and with an implied belief, either consciously or subconsciously, in the preeminence of European culture...
associated with the colonial period began to fade in the early twentieth century as Latin Americans began to acknowledge the uniqueness of their condition and started to follow their own path.
From the early twentieth century onwards, the art of Latin America was greatly inspired by the Constructivist Movement
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
. The Constructivist Movement was founded in Russia around 1913 by Vladimir Tatlin
Vladimir Tatlin
Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin was a Russian and Soviet painter and architect. With Kazimir Malevich he was one of the two most important figures in the Russian avant-garde art movement of the 1920s, and he later became the most important artist in the Constructivist movement...
. It quickly spread from Russia to Europe and then into Latin America. Joaquín Torres García
Joaquín Torres García
Joaquín Torres García , was a Uruguayan plastic artist and art theorist, also known as the founder of Constructive Universalism...
and Manuel Rendón have been credited with bringing the Constructivist Movement from Europe to Latin America.
After a long and successful career in Europe and the United States, Joaquín Torres-García returned to his native Uruguay in 1934, where he heavily promoted Constructivism. Quickly forming a circle of experienced peers and young artists as followers in Montevideo, in 1935 he founded the Asociación de Arte Constructivo there as an art center and exhibition space for his circle. The venue was closed in 1940 due to lack of funding. In 1943 he opened the Taller Torres-García, a workshop and training center that operated until 1962.
Muralism
Muralism or Muralismo is an important artistic movement generated in Latin America. It is popularly represented by the Mexican muralismMexican Muralism
Mexican muralism is a Mexican art movement. The most important period of this movement took place primarily from the 1920s to the 1960s, though it exerted an influence on later generations of Mexican artists...
movement of Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
, David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros
José David Alfaro Siqueiros was a social realist painter, known for his large murals in fresco that helped establish the Mexican Mural Renaissance, together with works by Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, and also a member of the Mexican Communist Party who participated in an...
, José Clemente Orozco
José Clemente Orozco
José Clemente Orozco was a Mexican social realist painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others...
, and Rufino Tamayo
Rufino Tamayo
Rufino Tamayo was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico. Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative abstraction with surrealist influences....
. In Chile, José Venturelli was an influential muralist, and Pedro Nel Gómez
Pedro Nel Gómez
Pedro Nel Gómez was a Colombian engineer, architect, painter, and sculptor. He started the Colombian Muralist Movement with Santiago Martinez Delgado, strongly influenced by the Mexican movement. With the fresco mural technique, Pedro Nel Gómez created 2,200 square meters of murals in public...
. Santiago Martinez Delgado
Santiago Martínez Delgado
Santiago Martínez Delgado was a Colombian painter, sculptor, art historian and writer. He established a reputation as a prominent muralist during the 1940s and is also known for his watercolors, oil paintings, illustrations and woodcarvings....
championed muralism in Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
as did Gabriel Bracho in Venezuela. The Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín
Oswaldo Guayasamín
Oswaldo Guayasamín was a Quechua native and Ecuadorian master painter and sculptor.-Early life:...
(a student of Orozco), the Brazilian Candido Portinari
Cândido Portinari
Candido Portinari was one of the most important Brazilian painters and also a prominent and influential practitioner of the neo-realism style in painting....
, and Bolivian Miguel Alandia Pantoja are also noteworthy. Some of the most impressive Muralista works can be found in Mexico, Colombia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. Mexican Muralism "enjoyed a type of prestige and influence in other countries that no other American art movement had ever experienced." Artists in Latin America found in Muralism a distinctive art form that provided for political and cultural expression, often focusing on issues of social justice related to their indigenous roots.
Generación Ruptura
Generación Ruptura,or "Rupture Generation," (sometimes simply known as "Ruptura") is the name given to an art movement in Mexico in 1960s in which younger artists broke with the established national style of Muralismo. Born out of the desire of younger artists for greater freedom of style in art, this movement is marked by expressionistic and figurative styles. Credited with initiating the Ruptura is Mexican artist José Luis Cuevas who, in 1958, published a paper called La Cortina del Nopal ("The Cactus Curtain") condemning Meixcan muralism as overly political in agenda, calling it "cheap journalism and harangue" rather than art. Representative artists include José Luis Cuevas, Alberto Gironella, and Rafael Coronel.Nueva Presencia
Nueva Presencia ("new presence") was an artist group founded by artists Arnold Belkin and Fancisco Icaza in the early 1960s. The artists of Nueva Presencia shared an anti-aesthetic rejection of contemporary trends in art and a belief that the artist had a social responsibility, a response to WWII atrocities such as the Holocaust and the atomic bomb. Their beliefs were outlined in the Nueva Presencia manifesto published in the first issue of the poster review of the same name. "No one, especially the artist, has the right to be indifferent to the social order." Members of the group included Leonel Góngora, Francisco Corzas, and photographer Ignacio "Nacho" LópezOtra Figuración
Otra Figuración ("Other Figuration") was an Argentine artist group and commune formed in 1961 and disbanded in 1966. Members Rómulo Macció, Ernesto Deira, Jorge de la Vega, and Luis Felipe NoéLuis Felipe Noé
Luis Felipe Noé is an artist, writer, intellectual and teacher from Buenos Aires, Argentina where he is known as Yuyo. In 1961 he formed Otra Figuración with three other Argentine artists. Their eponymous exhibition and subsequent work greatly influenced the Neofiguration movement...
lived together and shared a studio in Buenos Aires. Artists of Otra Figuración worked in an expressionistic abstract figurative style featuring vivid colors and components of collage. Otra Figuración were contemporaries of Nueva Presencia, although there was no direct contact between the two groups. Sometimes associated with the group are Raquel Forner, Antonio Berni, Alberto Heredia, and Antonio Seguí.
Surrealism
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André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, after visiting Mexico in 1938, proclaimed it "the surrealist country par excellence." Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, an artistic movement originating in post-WWI Europe, has strongly impacted the art of Latin America, where the mestizo culture, the legacy of European conquer over indigenous peoples, embodies contradiction, a central value of Surrealism.
The widely-known Mexican painter Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....
painted self-portraits and depictions of traditional Mexican culture in a style combining Realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
, Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
and Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
. Kahlo's work commands the highest selling price of all Latin American paintings and the second-highest for any female artist. Other female Mexican Surrealists include Leonora Carrington
Leonora Carrington
Leonora Carrington OBE was a British-born Mexican artist, a surrealist painter and a novelist. She lived most of her life in Mexico City.-Early life:...
(a British transplant to Mexico) and Remedios Varo
Remedios Varo
Remedios Varo Uranga was a Spanish-Mexican, para-surrealist painter and anarchist. She was born María de los Remedios Varo Uranga in Anglès, Girona, Spain in 1908. During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris where she was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement...
(a Spanish war exile). Mexican artist Alberto Gironella]], Chilean artists Roberto Matta
Roberto Matta
Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren , better known as Roberto Matta, was one of Chile's best-known painters and a seminal figure in 20th century abstract expressionist and surrealist art....
, Mario Carreño Morales
Mario Carreño Morales
Mario Carreño Morales was a Cuban painter.He studied painting in the Academia de San Alejandro, Havana, Cuba since 1925 until 1926. In 1934, he studied in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain...
, and Nemesio Antúnez, the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam
Wifredo Lam
Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla , better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture...
, and Argentinean artist Roberto Aizenberg
Roberto Aizenberg
Roberto Aizenberg was a painter and sculptor...
have also been classified as Surrealists.
Figuration
European classical art styles have made a long-lasting impression on the art of Latin America. Into the twentieth century, many Latin American artists continued to be schooled in the traditional 19th-century style, resulting in a continued emphasis on figurative work. Due to the far reach of figuration, the work often spans a number of different styles such as RealismRealism
Realism, Realist or Realistic are terms that describe any manifestation of philosophical realism, the belief that reality exists independently of observers, whether in philosophy itself or in the applied arts and sciences. In this broad sense it is frequently contrasted with Idealism.Realism in the...
, Pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
, Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, and Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, to name a few. These artists confront varying issues ranging from the personal to the political, but many have in common a shared interest in indigenous issues and their heritage of European cultural imperialism.
Parody
A common practice among Latin American figurative artists is to parody or paraphrase Old Master paintings, especially those of the Spanish court produced by Velázquez in the 15th century. These parodies serve a dual purpose, referring to the history of art and the cultural history of Latin America, and critiquing of the legacy of European cultural imperialism in Latin American nations. Two notable artists employing this technique regularly are Fernando Botero and Alberto Gironella.Colombian figurative artist Fernando Botero
Fernando Botero
Fernando Botero Angulo is a Colombian figurative artist. His works feature a figurative style, called by some "Boterismo", which gives them an unmistakable identity...
, whose work features unique "puffy" figures in various situations addressing themes of power, war, and social issues, has used this technique to draw parallels between current governing bodies and the Spanish monarchy. His 1967 painting The Presidential Family, is an early example. The painting, echoing Diego Velázquez
Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
' 1656 Spanish court painting Las Meninas
Las Meninas
Las Meninas is a 1656 painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The work's complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and creates an uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures...
, contains a self portrait of Botero standing behind a large canvas. The thick, "puffy" presidential family, decked out in fashionable finery and staring blandly out of the canvas, appear socially superior, drawing attention to social inequality. According to Botero, his "puffy" figures are not meant to be satirical.
- The deformation you see is the result of my involvement with painting. The monumental and, in my eyes, sensually provocative volumes stem from this. Whether they appear fat or not does not interest me. It has hardly any meaning for my painting. My concern is with formal fullness, abundance. And that is something entirely different.
Mexican painter and collagist Alberto Gironella, whose style mixes elements of Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
and Pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
, also produced parodies of official Spanish court paintings. He did dozens of versions of Velásquez's Queen Mariana of 1652. Gironella's parodies critique Spanish rule of Mexico by incorporating subversive imagery. ‘’La Reina de los Yugos’’ or “The Queen of Yokes” of 1975-81 depicts Mariana with a skirt made of upside-down ox yokes, signifying both Spanish dominance over Mexico’s indigenous peoples and those people’s subversion of Spanish rule. The yokes are rendered useless by being upturned. "[Gironella's] hallmark was the use of particular Spanish Grocery cans (sardines, mussels, etc.) in his works, and soda bottle caps nailed or glued around the rim of his paintings."
See also
- Art of ColombiaArt of ColombiaColombian art has 3,500 years of history and covers a wide range of media and styles ranging from Spanish Baroque devotional painting to Quimbaya gold craftwork to the "lyrical americanism" of painter Alejandro Obregón...
- Dominican Art
- Art in Puerto RicoArt in Puerto RicoWith the country's ethnically diverse background, Puerto Rican art reflects many influences, particularly Spanish and African.-Folk art:Santos, an especially beloved form of folk art, evolved from the Spanish church's use of sculptures to convert indigenous Puerto Ricans to Christianity. Meaning...
- Art of VenezuelaArt of VenezuelaVenezuelan art has a long and eventful history. Venezuela's museums and galleries are well on the way to forming a new discourse in which the public can experience and interact. Capturing a the Venezuelan public view and interact with the installations and collections within a museum setting,...
- Arte Indocristiano
- Brazilian artBrazilian artBrazil was colonized by Portugal in the middle of the 16th century. In those early times, owing to the primitive state of Portuguese civilization there, not much could be done in regard to art expression. The original inhabitants of the land, pre-Columbian Indian peoples, most likely produced...
- Cuban artCuban ArtCuban art is a very diverse cultural blend of African, European and North American design reflecting the diverse demographic of the island. Cuban artists embraced European modernism and the early part of the 20th century saw a growth in Cuban vanguardism movements, these movements were...
- Culture of MexicoCulture of MexicoMexico has changed rapidly during the 20th century. In many ways, contemporary life in its cities has become similar to that in neighboring United States and Europe. Most Mexican villagers follow the older way of life more than the city people do. More than 45% of the people of Mexico live in...
- Culture of PanamaCulture of PanamaThe culture of the Panama derived from European music, art and traditions that were brought over by the Spanish to Panama. Hegemonic forces have created hybrid forms of this by blending African and Native American culture with European culture. For example, the tamborito is a Spanish dance that was...
- Latin American cultureLatin American cultureLatin American culture is the formal or informal expression of the peoples of Latin America, and includes both high culture and popular culture as well as religion and other customary practices....
- List of Ecuadorian artists
- List of Latin American artists
- Mexican MuralismMexican MuralismMexican muralism is a Mexican art movement. The most important period of this movement took place primarily from the 1920s to the 1960s, though it exerted an influence on later generations of Mexican artists...
- Paraguayan Indian art
- Peruvian artPeruvian artPeruvian art has its origin in the Andean civilizations. These civilizations rose in the territory of modern Peru before the arrival of the Spanish.- Pre-Columbian art:...
- Pre-Columbian artPre-Columbian artPre-Columbian art is the visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, North, Central, and South Americas until the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and the time period marked by Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas....