Mexican art
Encyclopedia
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 Mesoamerica
n era, the colonial period, with the period after the gaining of Independence
further subdivided. Mesoamerican art is that produced in an area that encompasses much of what is now central and southern Mexico before the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire for a period of about 3000 years from 1500 BCE to 1500 CE. During this time, all influences on art production were indigenous with art heavily tied to religion and the ruling class. There was little to no real distinction among art, architecture and writing. The Spanish conquest led to 500 years of colonial rule, but art production would remain tied to religion with most associated with the building and decoration of churches as well as the use of religion to justify continued rule by the Spanish. Almost all art produced was in the European tradition, but indigenous elements remained, beginning a balancing act between European and indigenous traditions which continues to this day.
After Independence, art remained heavily European in style but indigenous themes appeared in major works due to the need for Mexico to distinguish itself from its colonial past. This preference for indigenous elements would continue into the first half of the 20th century, with the Social Realism or Mexican muralist movement
led by the likes of Diego Rivera
, David Alfaro Siqueiros
and José Clemente Orozco
. The strength of this artistic movement was such that it affected newly invented arts such as photography and strongly promoted folk art and crafts as part of Mexico’s identity. Since the 1950s, Mexican art has broken away from the muralist style and has been more globalized, integrated elements from as far as Asia and with Mexican artists and filmmakers having an effect on the global stage.
, which very roughly corresponds to central Mexico on into Central America
, encompassing three thousand years from 1500 BCE to 1500 CE generally divided into three eras, Pre Classic, Classic and Post Classic. The first dominant Mesoamerican culture was that of the Olmec
s, which peaked around 1200 BCE. This Olmecs originated much of what is associated with Mesoamerica, such as hieroglyphic writing
, calendar
, first advances in astronomy, monumental sculpture (Olmec heads) and jade
work. They were forerunner of later cultures such as Teotihuacan
, north of Mexico City, the Zapotecs in Oaxaca and the Mayas in southern Mexico, Belize
and Guatemala
. While empires rose and fell, the basic cultural underpinnings of the Mesoamerica stayed the same until the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. These included cities centered on plazas, temples usually built on pyramid bases and often, Mesoamerican ball courts, based on a mostly common cosmology.
While art forms such as a cave paintings and rock etchings are dated to much earlier, the history of Mexican art is considered to begin with that of Mesoamerican art created by sedentary cultures which built cities and often, dominions. While the art of Mesoamerica is more varied and extends over more time than anywhere else in the Americas, artistic styles also show a number of similarities. Unlike modern Western art, almost all Mesoamerican art was created to serve religious or political needs, rather than art for art’s sake. It is also strongly based on nature, the surrounding political reality and the gods.Octavio Paz
states that "Mesoamerican art is a logic of forms, lines, and volumes that is as the same time a cosmology." He goes on to state that this focus on space and time is highly distinct from European naturalism based on the representation of the human body. Even simple designs such as stepped frets
on buildings fall into this representation of space/time, life and the gods.
Art was expressed on a variety of mediums such as ceramics, amate paper and architecture. However, most of what is known of Mesoamerican art is from works that cover the stone buildings and pottery, mostly painting and relief work. Ceramics are dated to very early in the Mesoamerican period. They probably began as cooking and storage vessels but then were adapted to ritual and decorative uses. Ceramics were decorated in various ways by shaping, scratching, painting and firing by different methods. The earliest known, purely artistic endeavor was the production of small ceramic figures which began in Tehuacán
area around 1,500 BCE and then spread to Veracruz
, the Valley of Mexico
, Guerrero
, Oaxaca
, Chiapas
and the Pacific coast of Guatemala. The earliest of these are mostly female figures, thought to be associated with fertility rites because of their often oversized hips and thighs as well as a number with children in arms or nursing. When male figures appear, they are most often soldiers. The production of these ceramic figures, which would later include animals and other forms, remained an important art form for 2000 years. In the early Olmec period, most were small but large scale ceramic sculptures were also produced as large 55 cm. After the middle Pre Classic, ceramic sculpture declined in the center of Mexico except in the Chupícuaro
region. In the Mayan areas, the art disappears in the late Pre Classic, to reappear in the Classic, mostly in the form of whistles and other musical instruments. In a few areas, such as parts of Veracruz, the creation of ceramic figures would continue uninterrupted until the Spanish conquest, but as a handcraft, not a formal art.
Mesoamerican painting is found in various expressions from murals, to the creation of codices and the painting of ceramic objects. Evidence of painting goes back at least to 1800 BCE and continues uninterrupted in one form or another until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. Although it may have occurred earlier, the earliest known cases of the artistic painting of monumental buildings occur in the early Classic period with the Mayas at Uaxactun
and Tikal
and in Teotihuacan
with walls painted in various colors. Paints were made from animal, vegetable and mineral pigments and bases. Most painting focuses one or more human figures, which may be realistic or stylized, masculine, feminine or asexual. They may be naked or richly attired, but the social status of each figure is indicated in some way. Scenes often depict war, sacrifice, the roles of the gods or the acts of nobles. However, some common scenes with common people have been found as well. Other subjects included gods, symbols and animals from nature. Mesoamerican painting was bi-dimensional with no efforts to create the illusion of depth. However, movement is often represented.
Non ceramic sculpture in Mesoamerica began with the modification of animal bones, with the oldest known piece being an animal skull from Tequixquiac
that dates to between 10,000 and 8,000 BCE. Most Mesoamerican sculpture is of stone, and while relief work on buildings is the most dominant, free standing sculpture was done as well. Free standing three dimensional stone sculpture began with the Olmecs, with the most famous example being the giant Olmec stone heads. However, this would disappear for the rest of the Mesoamerican period in favor of relief work until the late Post Classic with the Aztec
s.
The majority of stonework during the Mesoamerican period is associated with monumental architecture, which along with the painting of murals, was considered to be an integral part of architecture, rather than separate. Monumental architecture began with the Olmecs in southern Veracruz
and the coastal area of Tabasco
, in places such as San Lorenzo, with the building large temples on pyramid bases, which can still be seen in sites such as Montenegro, Chiapa de Corzo
and La Venta
. This practice would then spread to the Oaxaca
area and the Valley of Mexico
, with cities such as Monte Albán
, Cuicuilco
and Teotihuacan
. These cities, like those later on, had a nucleus of one or more plazas, with temples, palaces and Mesoamerican ball courts. Alignment of these structures was based on the cardinal directions and astronomy for ceremonial purposes such as focusing the sun’s rays during the spring equinox on a sculpted or painted image. This was generally tied to calendar systems. Relief sculpture and/or painting were created as the structures were built. By the latter Pre Classic, just about all monumental structures in Mesoamerica would have extensive relief work. Some of the best known examples of this is Monte Albán, Teotihuacan and Tula
. Pre Hispanic reliefs are general lineal in design and low, medium and high reliefs can be found. While this technique is often favored for narrative scenes elsewhere in the world, Mesoamerican reliefs tend to focus on a single figure. The only time reliefs are used in the narrative sense is when several relief steles are placed together. The best relief work is considered to be from the Mayas, especially from Yaxchilan
.
Writing and art were not distinct as they have been for European cultures. Writing was considered to be art and art was often covering in writing. The reason for this is that both sought to record history and the culture’s interpretation of reality.(salvatvolp14) Manuscript writing on paper or other book like material then bundles into codices. The art of reading and writing was strictly designated to the highest priest classes, as this ability was a source of their power over society. The pictograms or glyphs of this writing system
were more formal and rigid than image found on murals and other art as they were considered to be mostly symbolic, representing formulas related to astronomical events, genealogy and historic events. Most surviving pre Hispanic codices come from the very late Mesoamerican period and very early colonial period, as more of these escaped destruction over history. For this reason, more is known about the Aztec Empire than the Mayan cultures.
for “vassal”), has a number of indigenous elements to it such as flattened faces and high-stiff relief.
The earliest of Mexico’s colonial artists were Spanish born and who came to Mexico during their careers. This included monks such as Fray Alonso López de Herrera. Later, most artists were born in Mexico but trained in European techniques, often from imported engravings. This dependence on imported copies meant that Mexican works would preserve styles for a while after it had gone out of fashion in Europe. In the colonial period, artists worked in guilds, not independently. Each guild had its own rules, precepts and mandates in technique which were not meant to encourage innovation.
The very first monasteries built in and around Mexico City, such as the monasteries on the slopes of Popocatepetl
, had Renaissance
, Plateresque
, Gothic
and/or Moorish
elements. They were relatively undecorated with building efforts going more towards high walls and fortress features to ward off attacks. However, the construction of more elaborate churches with large quantities of religious artwork would define much of the artistic output of the colonial period. Most of the production was related to the teaching and reinforcement of Church doctrine, but it also had political purposes such as the vying for power among religious orders such as the Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians. Religious art also set the rationale for Spanish domination over the indigenous. Today, colonial era structures and other works can be found nearly all over the country, but the most intense concentration is in the central highlands around Mexico City
. While colonial art remained almost completely European in style, with muted colors and no indication of movement, the addition of native elements which began with the tequitqui would continue. They would never be the center of the works but rather decorative motifs and filler such as the use of native foliage, pineapples, corn and cacao. Much of this can be seen on portals as well as large frescos that often decorated not only the interior of churches but also the walls of monastery area closed to the public.
The dominant form of art and architecture during most of the colonial period was Baroque
. In1577, Pope Gregory XIII
created the Academy of Saint Luke with the purpose of breaking with Renaissance style. The idea was to use painting and sculpture in and on churches to create iconography to teach and reinforce Church doctrine. In Spain, the first works in Baroque include the Patio of the Kings in El Escorial
monastery.
Spanish Baroque was transplanted to Mexico and then developed into its own varieties from the late 16th to late 18th centuries. Baroque art and architecture were mostly applied to churches. One reason for this was that in nearly all cities, towns and villages, the church was the center of the community, with streets in a regular pattern leading away from it. This reflected the Church’s role as the center of community life. Church design in New Spain
tended to follow is rectilinear pattern of squares and cubes, rather than contemporary European churches that favored curves and orbs. Mexican Baroque churches tend to be more introverted spaces than their European counterparts, especially focused on the main altar. The purpose was contemplation and meditation. The rich ornamentation was created to keep attention focused on the central themes. This was especially true of the main altar.
One important element of Mexican Baroque was in columns and pilaster
s, in particular the part between the capitol
and the base, which can be categorized in six different types including Salomonic
and estipite
(an inverted truncated pyramid) in the later colonial period. Even if the rest of the structure was not covered in decoration, such as in the “purist” style, columns and spaces between doubled columns still were profusely decorated. As it developed in Mexico, the Baroque split into a number of sub-styles and techniques. “Estucado” Baroque was purely decorative and did not employ any architectural features. Features were molded from stucco with intricate detail and either covered in gold leaf or paint. This form reached its height in the 17th century in Puebla and Oaxaca. Main surviving examples include the Chapel del Rosario in Puebla
and the Church at Tonantzintla. One reason this style fell out of favor was that the stucco work would eventually dissolve.
Talavera Baroque was a variety mostly confined to the states of Puebla
and Tlaxcala
. The main defining feature was the use of hand painted ceramic tiles of the Talavera type
. This style came into being here because of this pottery industry. Tiles are mostly found on the bell towers, domes and main portals of the exterior. They are also found interspersed on the rest of the facade as accents to brickwork. This type of Baroque first appeared in the 17th century and reached its height in the 18th. While wholesale use of this style is mostly confined to two states, elements of this tile work appear, especially in domes, in many other parts of the country. In the late Baroque era, artists in the provincial area of New Spain created intricate textured church facades and interiors similar to those of the major cities. However, it had a more two-dimensional quality, which led it to be called Mestizo Baroque or Folk Baroque. The two-level effect was less based on sculptural modeling and more on drilling into the surface to create a screen like effect. This has some similarities to pre Hispanic stone and wood carving allowing elements of indigenous art tradition to survive. Other Baroque styles in Mexico would not adorn all of the surfaces of the interior or exterior but rather focus their ornamentation on columns, pilasters and the spaces between pairs of these supports. Medallions and niches with statues commonly appear between columns and pilasters, especially around main portals and windows. Decorative patterns in columns after were wavy grooves (called estrías móviles).
Another late Baroque style in Mexico is often called Mexican Churrigueresque
after the Spanish Churriguera family which made altarpieces at this time. However, the more technical term for this very exuberant, anti classical style is ultra Baroque. It originated in Spain as architectural decoration, spreading to sculpture and even furniture carving. In Spain, the definitive element of ultra Baroque was the use of the Salomonic column along with the profuse decoration. In Mexico, the Salomonic column appears as well but one main distinctive aspect of Mexican ultra Baroque is the use of the “estipite” column in both buildings and altarpieces. This is not a true column, but rather an elongated base which is in the form of a inverted, truncated pyramid. This can be seen in the Mexico City Cathedral in both the Altar of the Kings and the main portal of the Tabernacle. Ultra Baroque was introduced by Jerónimo Balbás
into Mexico, whose design for an altar at the Seville Cathedral
was the inspiration for the Altar of the Kings, constructed in 1717. Balbás used estípites to convey a sense of fluidity, but his Mexican followers would flatten the facades and align the estepites, with less dynamic results. This is what Lorenzo Rodríguez did to Balbás design for the Altar of the Kings. He also created a stronger horizontal division between the first and second levels, which derived Mexican ultra Baroque from the Spanish version. The ultra Baroque appeared at the same time as when Mexican mines were producing great wealth, prompting numerous building projects. Much of Mexican ultra Baroque can be seen in and the city of Guanajuato and its mines. For this reason, the style became more developed in Mexico than in Spain.
Baroque painting became firmly established in Mexico by the middle of the 17th century. The Baroque painting style became firmly established in Mexico with the work of Spaniard Sebastián López de Arteaga. His painting is exemplified by the canvas called “Doubting Thomas” from 1643. In this work, the Apostle Thomas is shown inserting his finger in the wound in Christ’s side to emphasize Christ’s suffering. The caption below reads “the Word made flesh” is an example of Baroque’s didactic purpose. One difference between most painters in Mexico and their European counterparts what that they preferred realistic directness and clarity over fantastic colors, elongated proportions and extreme spatial relationships. The goal was to create a realistic scene in which the viewer could imagine himself a part of. This was a style created by Caravaggio
in Italy, which became popular with artists in Seville
, from which many migrants to New Spain came. Similarly, Baroque free standing sculptures feature life-size scale, realistic skin tones and the simulation of gold-threaded garments through a technique called “estofado,” the application of paint over gold leaf.
The most important later influence to Mexican and other painters in Latin America was the work of Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, known through copies made through engravings and mezzotint
techniques. He paintings were copied and reworked and became the standard for both religious and secular art. These later Baroque paintings moved from the confines of altarpieces to colossal freestanding canvases on church interiors. One of the best known Mexican painters of this kind of work was Cristóbal de Villalpando
. His work can be seen in the sacristy
of the Mexico City Cathedral, which was done between 1684 and 1686. These canvases were glued directly onto the walls with arched frames to stabilize them, placed just under the vaults of the ceiling. Even the fresco work of the 16th century was not usually this large. Another one of Villalpando’s notable works is the cupola of the Puebla Cathedral
in 1688. He used Rubens’ brush techniques and the shape of the structure to create a composition of clouds with angels and saints, from which a dove descends to represent the Holy Spirit. The light from the cupola’s windows is meant to symbolize God’s grace.
Colonial religious art was sponsored by both Church authorities and private patrons. Sponsoring the rich ornamentation of churches was a way for the very wealthy to gain prestige. In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Mexico City was one of the wealthiest in the world, mostly due to mining and agriculture, and sufficient to support a large art scene. While most commissioned art was for churches, there were also secular works commissioned as well. Portrait painting was known relatively early in the colonial period, mostly of viceroys and archbishops. Beginning in the late Baroque period, portrait painting of local nobility became a significant genre. Two notable painters of this type are brothers Nicolás and Juan Rodríguez Juárez. These works followed European models, with symbols of rank and titles either displayed unattached in the outer portions or worked into another element of the paintings such as curtains. Another type of secular colonial painting is called “casta,” referring to the mostly racially based caste system of New Spain
. These were often commissioned by Spanish functionaries as souvenirs of Mexico. After Independence
, production of these paintings stopped and the later political policies of a “mestizo” identity resulted in the hiding of these paintings until very beginning of the 21st century, when they began to be studied again.
Mexico was a crossroads of trade in the colonial period, with goods from Asia and Europe mixing with those natively produced. This convergence is most evident in the decorative arts of New Spain. It was popular among the upper classes to have a main public room, called a salon de estrado, to be covered in rugs and cushions for women to recline in Moorish fashion. Stools and later chairs and settees were added for men. Folding screens were introduced from Japan, with Mexican styles ones then produced called “biombos” The earliest of these Mexican made screens had oriental designs but later ones had European and Mexican themes. One important example of this is a screen with the conquest of Mexico one side and a aerial view of Mexico City on the other at the Franz Mayer Museum
.
The last colonial era art institution to be established was the Academy of San Carlos
in 1783. While the depiction of saints consumed most artistic efforts, they were not without political effects. The most important of these was the rise of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a American rather than European saint, representative of a distinct identity. By the late 18th century, Spain’s colonies were becoming culturally independent from Spain, including its arts. The Academy was established by the Spanish Crown to regain control of artistic expression and the propaganda it disseminated. This school was staffed by Spanish artists in each of the major disciplines, with the first director being Antonio Gil . The school also became home to a number of plaster casts of classic statues from the San Fernando Fine Arts Academy
in Spain brought here for teaching purposes. These casts can still be seen on display in the Academy's central patio.
Around the same time, the Crown also promoted the establishment in Mexico of the Neoclassical
style of art and architecture, which had become popular in Spain. This style was a reinterpretation of Greco-Roman references and its use was a way to reinforce European dominance in the Spain’s colonies. The most notable Neoclassical artist from the Academy at the end of the colonial period was Manuel Tolsá
. He first taught sculpture at the academy and then became its second director. Tolsá designed a number of Neoclassical buildings
in Mexico but his best known work is an equestrian status of King Charles IV in bronze cast in 1803 and originally placed in the Zocalo
. Today it can be seen at the Museo Nacional de Arte
.
. During this war it was closed. Despite its association with the Spanish Crown and European painting tradition, the Academy was reopened by the new government after Mexico gained full independence in 1821. Its former Spanish faculty and students either died during the war or returned to Spain, but when it reopened it again attracted the best art students of the country, and would continue to emphasize classical European traditions until the early 20th century. The academy was renamed to the National Academy of San Carlos. The new government continued to keep Neoclassical in favor as it considered the Baroque as a symbol of colonialism. It continued in favor through the reign of Maximilian I
although President Benito Juárez
supported it only reluctantly, considering its European focus as a vestige of colonialism.
Despite Neoclassicism’s association with European domination, it remained favored by the Mexican government after Independence and used in some major government commissions at the end of the century. However, indigenous themes would appear in paintings and sculptures. One indigenous figure depicted in Neoclassical style is Tlahuicol, done by Catalan
artist Manuel Vilar in 1851. In 1887, Porfirio Díaz
commissioned the statue of the last Aztec emperor, Cuauhtémoc
, which can still be seen on Paseo de la Reforma
. Cuauhtémoc is depicted with a toga-like cloak with a feathered headdress similar to an Etruscan or Trojan warrior rather than an Aztec emperor. The base has elements reminiscent of both Mitla and Roman architecture. This base contains bronze plates depicting scenes from the Spanish conquest, but focusing on the indigenous figures. There were two reasons for this shift in preferred subject. The first was that Mexican society denigrated colonial culture with the indigenous past seen as more truly Mexican. The other factor was a worldwide movement among artists to confront society which began around 1830. In Mexico, this anti establishment sentiment was directed at the Academy of San Carlos and its European focus.
In the first half of the 19th century, the Romantic style of painting was introduced into Mexico and the rest of Latin America by foreign travelers interested in the newly independent country. One of these was Bavaria
n artist Johann Moritz Rugendas
, who lived in the country from 1831 to 1834. He painted scenes with dynamic composition and bright colors in accordance with Romantic style, looking for striking, sublime and beautiful images in Mexico as well as other areas of Latin America. However much of Rugendas's works are sketches for major canvases, many of which were never executed Others include Englishman Daniel Egerton
, who painted landscapes in the British Romantic tradition and German Karl Nebel who primarily created lithographs of the various social and ethnic populations of the country.
A number of native-born artists at the time followed the European Romantic painters in their desire to document the various cultures of Mexico. These painters were called costumbristas, a word deriving from costumbre (custom). The styles of these painters were not always strictly Romantic, involving other styles as well. Most of these painters were from the upper classes and educated in Europe. While the European painters viewed subjects as exotic, the costumbristas had a more nationalistic sense of their home countries. One of these painters was Agustín Arrieta from Puebla, who applied realistic techniques to scenes from his home city, capturing its brightly painted tiles and ceramics. His scenes often involved everyday life such as women working in kitchen and even depicted black and Afro-Peruvian vendors.
In the mid- to late 19th century, Latin American academies began to shift away from severe Neoclassicism to what is sometimes known as “academic realism.” This shifted to a less idealized and simplified depiction to more realistic and with emphasis on details. Scenes in this style were most often portraits of the upper classes and battles, especially those from the Independence period and Biblical scenes. When the Academy of San Carlos was reopened after a short closure in 1843, its new Spanish and Italian faculty pushed this realist style. Despite government support and nationalist themes, native artists were generally shorted in favor of Europeans. One of the most important painters in Mexico in the mid 19th century was Catalan Pelegrín Clavé, who painted some landscapes but best known for his depictions of the intellectual elite of Mexico City. Realism painters also attempted to portray Aztec culture and people, depicting setting inhabited by indigenous people, live indigenous models and costumes based on those in Conquest era codices. One of these was Félix Parra, whose depictions of the conquest empathized with the suffering of the indigenous. In 1869, José Obregón painted “The Discovery of Pulque” basing his depictions of architecture on Mixtec
codices, but misrepresented temples as a setting for a throne.
The art of the 19th century after Independence is considered to have declined, especially during the last decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, known as the Porfirato, named after Porfirio Díaz who ruled the country for over three decades. During this time, painting, sculpture and the decorative arts was mostly limited to imitation of European styles, especially of religious themes.
). Between 1929 and the 1950s, the academy’s architecture program would be split off as a department of the university and the programs in painting, sculpture and engraving were renamed the National School of Expressive Arts now the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (ENAP). Both would move to the south of the city in mid century, to Ciudad Universitaria
and Xochimilco
respectively, leaving only some graduate programs in fine arts in the original academy building in the historic center
. ENAP remains one of the main centers for the training of Mexico’s artists.
While a shift to more indigenous/Mexican themes appears in the 19th century, the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920 would have a dramatic effect on Mexican art. The end of the conflict resulted in power in the hands of the Partido Revolucionario Nacional (today Partido Revolucionario Institucional), which took it into a socialist direction. This made the government allied with many of the intellectuals and artists in Mexico City. The government commissioned murals for public buildings to reinforce its political messages including those which emphasized Mexican rather than European themes. It was not created for popular or commercial tastes; however, it gained recognition not only in Mexico, but in the United States.) This production of art in conjunction with government propaganda is known as the Mexican Modernist School or the Mexican Muralist Movement and it redefined art in Mexico. Octavio Paz gives José Vasconcelos
credit for initiating the Muralist movement in Mexico, by commissioning the best-known painters in1921 to decorate the walls of various public buildings. The commissioning had political aims related to the glorification of the Mexican Revolution
and related to redefining the Mexican people vis-a-vis their indigenous and Spanish past. The first of these commissioned paintings were at San Ildefonso
done by Fernando Leal, Fermín Revueltas, David Alfaro Siqueiros
and Diego Rivera
. The first true fresco in the building was the work of Jean Charlot
. However, a number of technical errors were made in the construction of these murals and a number of them began to blister and were covered in wax to preserve them. Roberto Montenegro
painted the former church and monastery of San Pedro y San Pablo
. But the mural in the church was painted in tempura and soon began to flake. In the monastery area, Montenegro painted the "Feast of the Holy Cross" which has a figure of Vasconcelos, as the protector of the Muralists. However, this was later blanked out and a figure of a woman painted over it.
The first main protagonist in the production of modern murals in Mexico is Dr. Atl
. Dr Atl was born with the name of Gerard Murillo in Guadalajara in 1875. He changed his name in order to identify himself as Mexican. Alt also worked to promote Mexico’s folk art and handcrafts
. While he had some success as a painter in Guadalajara, his radical ideas against academia and the government prompted him to move to more liberal Mexico City. In 1910, months before the start of the Mexican Revolution
, Atl painted the first modern mural in Mexico. He taught a number of the major artists to follow him including those who would soon dominate Mexican mural painting.
The muralist movement reached its height in the 1930s with three main protagonists, Diego Rivera
, David Alfaro Siqueiros
and José Clemente Orozco
. It is the most studied part of Mexico’s art history. All three were artists trained in classical European techniques and many of their early works are imitations of then-fashionable European paintings styles, some of which were adapted to Mexican themes. The political situation in Mexico from the 1920s to 1950s and the influence of Dr. Atl prompted these artists to break with European traditions, using bold indigenous images, lots of color and depictions of human activity, especially of the masses, in contrast to the solemn and detached art of Europe. Preferred mediums generally excluded traditional canvases and church porticos and instead were the large, then undecorated walls of Mexico’s government buildings. The main goal in many of these paintings was the glorification of Mexico’s pre Hispanic past as a definition of Mexican identity. They had success in both Mexico and United States, which brought them fame and wealth as well as a number of Mexican and American students.
These muralists revived the fresco technique for their mural work, although Siqueiros moved to industrial techniques and materials such as the application of pyroxilin, a commercial enamel used for airplanes and automobiles. One of Rivera’s earliest mural efforts emblazoned the courtyard of the Ministry of Education with a series of dancing tehuanas (natives of Tehuantepec
in southern Mexico). This four-year project went on to incorporate many other contemporary indigenous themes, and it eventually encompassed 124 frescoes that extended three stories high and two city blocks long. The Abelardo Rodriguez Market
was painted in 1933 by students of Diego Rivera, one of whom is Isamu Noguchi
. One other important figure of this time period is Frida Kahlo
although most of her fame in life was as Diego Rivera’s wife, with their stormy relationship. While she painted canvases instead of murals, she considered as part of the Mexican Modernist School as her work and emphasized Mexican folk culture and colors.
The first to break with the nationalistic and political tone of the muralist movement was Rufino Tamayo
. For this reason, he was appreciated outside of Mexico before he was inside it. Tamayo was a contemporary of Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco, getting his training at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. Like them, he explored Mexican identity in his work after the Mexican Revolution; however, he rejected the political Social Realism popularized by the three other artists and was himself rejected by the new establishment. He left for New York in 1926. Here he found success which allowed him to exhibit in his native Mexico. However, his lack of support for the post Revolutionary government was controversial. For this, he mostly remained in New York, continuing with his success there and later in Europe. His rivalry with the main three Mexican muralists continued both in Mexico and internationally through the 1950s. Even a belated honorific of “The Fourth Great One” was controversial.
The first major movement after the muralists was the Rupture Movement which began in the 1950s and 1960s with painters such as José Luis Cuevas
, Gilberto Navarro, Rafael Coronel
, and Alfredo Casaneda and sculptor Juan Soriano
. They rejected social realism and nationalism and incorporated surrealism, visual paradoxes and elements of Old World painting styles. This break would mean the later Mexican artists would generally not influenced by muralism or by Mexican folk art. José Luis Cuevas created self-portraits in which he reconstructed scenes from famous paintings by Spanish artists as Diego Velázquez
, Francisco de Goya, and Picasso. Like Kahlo before him, he often drew himself but instead of being center, his image is most often to the side, as an observer. The goal was to emphasize the transformation of received visual culture. Another important figure during this time period was Swiss-Mexican Gunther Gerzso
, but his work classified as a “hard-edged variant” of Abstract Expressionism, based on clearly defined geometric forms as well as colors, with an effect that makes them look like low relief. His work was a mix of European abstraction and Latin American influences, including Mesoamerican ones.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, Neo-expressionist art is represented in Mexico by Manuel Felguerez
, Teresa Cito, Alejandro Pinatado and Jan Hendriz. These are often abstract, non-figurative works, full of color and contract. Felguerez is a painter and engraver born in Zacatecas
in 1928, who studied in Mexico City, Paris and Russia. He had his first exhibition in abstract art in 1957. Since then, he has been prolific with up to 25 paintings per year and has done about thirty murals. In addition to these Mexican artists, one other, of Swiss German extraction, Mathias Goeritz
was also important. Goertz was a painter sculptor and teacher active in Mexico until his death in 1990. He arrived to Mexico in 1949, after spending time in Spain, Morocco
and Granada. He began as a professor in Guadalajra, then opened the Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City in the 1950s. In the same decade, he created a number of public sculptures including the Torres Satélite in Ciudad Satélite
. In the 1960s, he became central in the development of abstract and other modern art along with José Cuevas and Pedro Friedeberg
.
In the mid 1980s, the next major movement in Mexico was “Neomexicanismo,” a slightly surreal, somewhat kitsch and post modern version of Social Realism focused on popular culture rather than history. The name of “neomexicanismo” was originally depreciative by critics of the time. Works were not necessarily murals, using other mediums such as collage and often using parody and allegory of varied cultural icons, mass media, religion and other aspects of Mexican culture. The interest of this generation of artists was traditional Mexican values, exploring their roots and often questioning or subverting them. Another common theme was Mexican culture vis-à-vis globalization.
Art from the 1990s to the present is roughly categorized as “post-modern” although this term has been used for a number of works before. Major artists associated with this label include Betsabee Romero, Monica Castillo
, Francisco Larios, and Diego Toledo. The work of Betsabee Romeros is based on cars and car parts, especially tires. Born in 1963, her work mixes folk, Pop
and modernist elements. Her most influential works are sculptural. One example is a reconstructed vintage Volkswagen Beetle
with parts of the body replaced with straw, plastic roofing and wood paneling. Another is Minimalist-Surrealist influenced piece in the shape of a car roof pushing up from under a gallery floor of wood veneer. Another important aspect of her work are the creation of art cars and prints made from carved rubber tires. Monica Castillo of Mexico City is known for her post modern, deconstructivist self-portraits in a variety of media. Francisco Larios creates ex-votos
on his computer.
Despite maintaining an active national art scene, Mexican artists after the muralist period had a more difficult time difficult time breaking into the international art market. One reason for this is that in the Americas, Mexico City has been replaced by New York as the center of the art world, especially for patronage. Within Mexico, the government sponsorship of art in the 20th century, dominated until 2000 by the PRI party had the effect of censorship, especially on religious themes and criticism of the government. This was mostly passive, with the government giving grants to artists that conformed to government requirements. However, in 1999, La Colección Gallery opened as a permanent museum inside a Jumex
factory in Ecatepec
, just outside of Mexico City. The multimillion dollar budget of this museum attracts galleries and museums from around the world. Another important institution is Kurimanzutto, a private gallery in 1999 founded by José Kui and Monica Manzutto which has promoted artists such as Minerva Cuevas
, Daniel Guzmán
and Jonathan Hernández. These private galleries and museums have promoted more controversial and political artists which tend to not be shown in state-run institutions. International exposure and private sales has allowed a number of Mexican artists to be independent of the government.
Mexican art reached another peak in the international art scene in the 1990s. Much of this return has been due to existence of biennials, art fairs and international exhibitions outside of Mexico. In 2002 alone, there were more than six major museums around the world which had large scale exhibitions devoted to Mexico. In 2003, Mexico Illustrated was a large scale project by Albright College
with sixty one artists and a budget of half a million dollars. Much of Mexican’s artists success now is represented by being part of foreign galleries in New York, London and Zurich
. Despite the increase in interest in Mexican fine art, challenges still remain for Mexican artists hoping to break into the international art market. First, within Mexico art criticism is generally neglected with only one prominent art critic, Cuauhtémoc Medina. With no native writing about art, symbolism and trends, much modern Mexican art shown abroad is mislabeled and/or poorly described as foreign institutions do not sufficiently understand or appreciate the political and social circumstances behind the art. Also, the influences of the muralist period persist. Since much of the art produced since the 1990s is not “obviously Mexican” by the standards of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros, and lacking references to stereotypical cultural references such as pyramids and indigenous people, it is often overlooked. Most modern Mexican artists have an international perspective concerned with a globalized world. Pyramids may appear but they are mixed with images from other cultures such as geishas, yogis and Chinese characters, which come from a recent fascination with Asia. Artist which have produced mostly Asia themed works include Fernanda Brunet, Yushai Jusidman and Pablo Vargas Lugo. Japanese comics and cartoons are a significant of this fascination which can include Hello Kitty
and My Melody
.
, called “artesanía” in Mexico, is a complex category of items, made by hand or in small workshops intended for utilitarian, decorative or other purposes. These include ceramics, wall hangings, certain types of paintings, textiles and more. Like the more formal arts, artesanía has both indigenous and European roots and is considered to be a valued part of Mexico’s ethnic heritage.
This linking among the arts and cultural identity was most strongly forged by the country’s political, intellectual and artistic elite in the first half of the 20th century, after the Mexican Revolution. Artists such as Diego Rivera
, Rufino Tamayo
and Frida Kahlo
used artesanía as inspiration for a number of their murals and other works. Unlike the fine arts, artesanía is created by common people and often those of indigenous heritage, who learn their craft through formal or informal apprenticeship. The linking of artesanía and Mexican identity continues often through television and movies in the country, as well as tourism promotion.
Most of the artesanía produced in Mexico is ordinary things made for daily use, but they are still considered artistic because most contain decorative details and/or are painted in bright colors for aesthetic purposes. The bold use of colors in crafts and other constructions extends back into pre-Hispanic times. These would be joined by other colors introduced by European and Asian contact, but always in bold tones. Design motifs can vary from purely indigenous to mostly European with some other elements thrown in. Geometric designs are prevalent and the most directly connected to Mexico’s pre-Hispanic past and/or items made by the country’s remaining purely indigenous communities. Motifs from nature are as popular, if not more so, than geometric patterns in both pre-Hispanic and European-influenced designs. They are especially prevalent in wall-hangings and ceramics.
One of the best of Mexico’s handcrafts is Talavera pottery
produced in Puebla
. It has a mix of Chinese, Arab, Spanish and indigenous design influences. The best known folk painting is called the “ex-voto” or “retablo” votive paintings
. This is a small commemorative painting or other artwork created by a believer honoring the intervention of a saint or other figure. The untrained style of ex-voto painting had been appropriated at mid-century by Kahlo, who believed they were the most authentic expression of Latin American art.
from France. It was initially used to document some of the battles of this war.The first sound film in Mexico was made in 1931 and called Desde Santa.The first Mexican film genre appeared between 1920 and 1940 called “ranchero.”
While Mexico’s Golden Age of Cinema is considered to be the 1940s and 1950s, two films from the mid to late 1930s, Allá en el Rancho Grande (1936) and Vamanos con Pancho Villa (1935), set the standard of this age thematically, aesthetically and ideologically. These films featured archetypal star figures and symbols based on broad national mythologies. Some of the mythology, according to Carlos Monsiváis
, includes the participants in family melodramas, the masculine charro
s of ranchero films, femme fatals (often played by María Félix
and Dolores del Río
) and the indigenous peoples of Emilio Fernández
’s films, and Cantinflas
’s peladito (urban miscreant). Settings were often ranches, the battlefields of the Revolution and cabaret
s. Movies about the Mexican Revolution
focused on the initial overthrow of the Porfirio Díaz
regime rather than the fighting amongst the various factions afterwards. They also tended to focus on rural themes as Mexican, even though the population was increasingly urban.
Mexico had two main advantages in filmmaking during this time period. The first was a generation of talented actors and filmmakers. These included actors such as María Félix
, Jorge Negrete
, Pedro Armendáriz
, Pedro Infante
, Cantinflas
and directors such as Emilio “El Indio” Fernandez
and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa
. Many of these same starts also had success in the United States and at the Cannes Film Festival
. On the corner of La Brea and Hollywood Boulevard
, there is a sculpture of four women that represent the four pillars of the cinema industry with one of these represented by Mexican actress Dolores del Rio
. Gabriel Figueroa is known for his black and white camerawork which is generally stark and expressionist, with simple but sophisticated camera movement. One other advantage in the 1940s for Mexico was that it was not heavily involved in the Second World War and therefore, had a greater supply of celluloid for films, then also used for bombs.
In the 1930s, the government became interested in the industry in order to promote certain cultural and political values. Much of the production during the Golden Age was a mix of public and private financing with the government eventually taking a larger role. In 1942, the Banco Cinematográfico would finance almost all of the industry, and this came under government control by 1947. This gave the government extensive censorship rights through deciding which projects it would finance. While the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) censored films in many ways in the 1940s and 1950s, it was not as repressive as other Spanish speaking countries, but it played a strong role in how Mexico’s government and culture was portrayed.
The Golden Age ended in the late fifties, with the 1960s dominated by often poorly made imitations of Hollywood westerns and comedies. These films were increasingly shot outdoors and popular films featured stars from lucha libre
. However, art and experimental film production in Mexico has its roots in this same time period, which would begin to bear fruit in the 1970s. Director Paul Leduc surfaced in the 1970s specializing in films without dialogue. He first major success was with Reed:Insurgent Mexico (1971) followed by a biography of Frida Kahlo
called Frida (1984). He is the most consistently political of modern Mexican directors. In the 1990s, he filmed Latino Bar (1991) and Dollar Mambo (1993). However, his silent films generally have not had commercial success. In the late 20th century, the main proponent of Mexican art cinema was Arturo Ripstein Jr. whose career began with a spaghetti Western like film called Tiempo de morir in 1965 and is considered to be the successor to Luis Buñuel
, who had worked in Mexico in the 1940s. Some of his classic films include El Castillo de la pureza (1973), Lugar sin limites (1977) and La reina de la noche (1994) exploring topics such as family ties and even homosexuality, dealing in cruelty, irony and tragedy.
State censorship was relatively lax in the 1960s and early 1970s, but came back during the latter 1970s and 1980s, monopolizing production and distribution. Anther factor was that many Mexican film making facilities were taken over by Hollywood productions in the 1980s, crowding out local production. The quality of films diminished enough that for some of these years, Mexico’s Ariel film award
was suspended for lack of qualifying candidates. Popular film making decreased but the art sector actually grew, sometimes producing works outside the view of censors such as Jorge Fons
’ 1989 film Rojo amanecer on the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre
. The movie was banned by the government but history was changing and Fons received support with Mexico and abroad. The film was shown although not too widely. However, it was the beginning of more editorial freedom for filmmakers in Mexico.
Starting in the 1990s, Mexican cinema began to make a comeback, mostly through co production with foreign interests. Many films have been with urban and everyday themes. However, one main reason for current international interest in Mexican cinema was the wild success of Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate)
. In 1993, this film was the largest grossing foreign language film in U.S. history and runs in a total of 34 countries. Since then, Mexican film as divided into two genres. Those for a more domestic audience tend to be more personal and more ambiguously political such as Pueblo de Madera, La vida conjugal, and Angel de fuego. Those geared for international audiences have more stereotypical Mexican images and include Solo con tu pareja, La invencion de cronos along with Como agua para chocolate.
Mexico’s newest generation of successful directors includes Alejandro González Iñárritu
, Guillermo del Toro
and Alfonso Cuarón
. Films include Cuarón/Children of Men
filmed in England and El Laberinto del fauno
which was a Mexican/Spanish production. Film professionals today tend to be at least bilingual (Spanish/English) and often multicultural better able to participate in the global market for films than their predecessors.
about six months after its discovery, and its use spread quickly. It was initially used for portraits of the wealthy because of its cost, but some landscape and pre Hispanic ruins as well. Another relatively common type of early photographic portrait was those of recently deceased children called “little angels” which persisted into the first half of the 20th century. This custom is derived from a long Catholic tradition of celebrating the dead child’s immediate acceptance into heaven, bypassing purgatory. This photography replaced the practice of making drawings and other depictions of them as this was considered a “happy occasion.” Formal portraits were the most common form of commercial photography through the end of the 19th century.
Modern photography in Mexico did not begin as an art form, but rather as documentation, associated with periodicals and government projects. It dates to the Porfirio Díaz
period of rule or the Porfiriato from the late 19th century to 1910. Porfirian era photography was heavily inclined toward the documentation of the nation’s modernization to the rest of the world, with Mexico City as its cultural showpiece. This image was European based with some indigenous elements for distinction. Stylized images of the indigenous during the Porfirato were principally done by Ybañez y Sora in the costumbrista
painting style which was very popular outside of Mexico. However, the most important Porfirian era photographer was Guillermo Kahlo
, who worked with associate Hugo Brehme . Kahlo established his own studio in the first decade of the 1900s and was hired by businesses and the government to document mostly architecture, interiors, landscapes and factories. Kahlo’s style reflected the narratives of the period, solely focusing on major constructions and events, and avoiding the common populace. It also avoided any subjects that hinted at the political instability of the country at the time, such as strikes. One major Kahlo project was the Photographic Inventory of Spanish Colonial Church Architecture in Mexico (1910) which consisted of twenty five albums sponsored by the federal government to document the colonial architecture still standing. Kahlo’s photography was used to link Mexico’s past to its then progress with political and social power provided in symbols and ideals as well to link the government’s aspirations with its colonial and pre Hispanic past.
The other important pioneer of Mexican photography is Agustín Victor Casasola
. Like Kahlo, he began his career in the Porfirato, but his career was focused on photography for periodicals. Again like Kahlo, Casasola’s work prior to the Mexican Revolution focused on non-controversial photographs, focusing on the lives of the elite. However, the outbreak of this civil war caused Casasola’s choice of subject to change. He focused not only on portraits of the main protagonists such as Francisco Villa and general battle scenes, but he also took photographs of executions, the dead and focused on the people involved with faces showing pain, kindness, resignation and more. His work during this time produced a large collection of photographs, many of which are very familiar to Mexicans has they have been widely reprinted and reused, but often without credit to Casasola. After the war, Casasola continued to photograph common people, especially migrants to Mexico City during the 1920s and 1930s. His total known archives has about half a million images with many of his works archived in the former monastery of San Francisco in Pachuca
.
Kahlo and Casasola are considered to be the first two most important photographers to develop the medium in Mexico, with Kahlo defining architectural photography and Casasolas establishing photojournalism. Neither man thought of himself as an artist, especially not Casasolas, who thought of himself as a historian in the Positivist
tradition, but the photography of both show attention to detail, lighting, placement os subjects and more for emotional or dramatic effect.
For the rest of the 20th century, most photography would be connected to documentation. However, artistic trends from both inside and outside the country had its effect. In the 1920s, the dominant photographic style was called “pictorialism
” where images would have a romantic or dream like quality due to the use of filters and other techniques. American Edward Weston
would break with this tradition, taking these effects away for more realistic and detailed images. This would cause a split in the photography world between pictorialists and realists both inside and outside of Mexico. Weston and his Italian assistant Tina Modotti
were in Mexico from 1923 to 1926, allying themselves with Mexican realist photographers Manuel Álvarez Bravo
as well as muralists such as Gabriel Fernández Ledesma
. These photographers political and social aspirations matched those of the muralist movement and the new post Revolution government. Photography and other arts shifted to depictions of the country’s indigenous heritage and the glorification of the Mexican common people. The main reason for this was to reject the elitist and heavily European values of the Porfiriato along with the increasing cultural influence of the United States in favor of an “authentic” and distinct Mexican identity. Another was the government’s decision to use this imagery, rather than the still-fresh memories of the battles and atrocities of the Revolution to promote itself.
Manuel Alvarez Bravo experimented with abstraction in his photography and then formed his own personal style, concerned with Mexican rites and customs. He was active from the 1920s until his death in the 1990s. Like other artists of the 20th century, he was concerned with balancing international artistic trends with the expression of Mexican culture and people. His photographic techniques were concerned with transforming the ordinary into the fantastic. From the end of the 1930s to the 1970s his photography developed with the same themes to new technologies such as color. In the 1970s, he experimented with female nudes.
These post Revolution photographers would influence the generations after them, but the emphasis would remain on documentary journalism, especially for newspapers. For this reason, the focus would remain on social issues. This included work by Nacho López and Hector Garcia, best known for their photography of the student uprising of 1968
.
During the 1970s, there was a fusion of various styles with still a marked social focus. During the same time period, a number of institutions dedicated to the promotion of photography and conservation of photographs, such as the Centro de la Imagen, the Fototeca Nacional del INAH and the publication Luna Córnea, were established.
Contemporary photography in Mexico still remains mostly focused on photojournalism and other kinds of documentary. Francisco Mata de Rosas is considered to be the most notable photographer in contemporary Mexico mostly working with documentaries. He has published a number of books including México Tenochtitlan and Tepito, bravo el barrio. Eniac Martínez specializes in panoramics. Patricia Aridjis works with social themes mostly to illustrate books. Gerardo Montiel Klint’s work has been describing a “shadowing and dark world”, focusing on the angst and violence of adolescents. The most recent generation of photographers work with new and digital technologies. One of these is Javier Orozco
who specializes in interiors.
However, there is purely artistic photography done in the country which has had impact.I n 2002, a scandalous photographic exhibit featured images of young, blonde women, Mexican multimillionaires or wives of the super rich done by photographer Daniela Rossell. While the women are heavily made up and in sexy poses, most of the controversy related to the ostentatious condition of their homes, filled with expensive paintings, hunting trophies, crystal chandeliers, gold lame
wallpaper and household help. The photographs set off a wave of social criticism as well as tabloid gossip.
History of Mexico
The history of Mexico, a country located in the southern portion of North America, covers a period of more than two millennia. First populated more than 13,000 years ago, the country produced complex indigenous civilizations before being conquered by the Spanish in the 16th Century.Since the...
, divided into the Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...
n era, the colonial period, with the period after the gaining of Independence
Mexican War of Independence
The Mexican War of Independence was an armed conflict between the people of Mexico and the Spanish colonial authorities which started on 16 September 1810. The movement, which became known as the Mexican War of Independence, was led by Mexican-born Spaniards, Mestizos and Amerindians who sought...
further subdivided. Mesoamerican art is that produced in an area that encompasses much of what is now central and southern Mexico before the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire for a period of about 3000 years from 1500 BCE to 1500 CE. During this time, all influences on art production were indigenous with art heavily tied to religion and the ruling class. There was little to no real distinction among art, architecture and writing. The Spanish conquest led to 500 years of colonial rule, but art production would remain tied to religion with most associated with the building and decoration of churches as well as the use of religion to justify continued rule by the Spanish. Almost all art produced was in the European tradition, but indigenous elements remained, beginning a balancing act between European and indigenous traditions which continues to this day.
After Independence, art remained heavily European in style but indigenous themes appeared in major works due to the need for Mexico to distinguish itself from its colonial past. This preference for indigenous elements would continue into the first half of the 20th century, with the Social Realism or Mexican muralist movement
Mexican 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...
led by the likes 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...
and 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...
. The strength of this artistic movement was such that it affected newly invented arts such as photography and strongly promoted folk art and crafts as part of Mexico’s identity. Since the 1950s, Mexican art has broken away from the muralist style and has been more globalized, integrated elements from as far as Asia and with Mexican artists and filmmakers having an effect on the global stage.
Pre Hispanic era
The pre Hispanic art of Mexico belongs to a cultural region known as MesoamericaMesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...
, which very roughly corresponds to central Mexico on into Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
, encompassing three thousand years from 1500 BCE to 1500 CE generally divided into three eras, Pre Classic, Classic and Post Classic. The first dominant Mesoamerican culture was that of the Olmec
Olmec
The Olmec were the first major Pre-Columbian civilization in Mexico. They lived in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco....
s, which peaked around 1200 BCE. This Olmecs originated much of what is associated with Mesoamerica, such as hieroglyphic writing
Mesoamerican writing systems
Mesoamerica, like India, Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt, is one of the few places in the world where writing has developed independently. Mesoamerican scripts deciphered to date are logosyllabic, combining the use of logograms with a syllabary, and they are often called hieroglyphic scripts...
, calendar
Mesoamerican calendars
Mesoamerican calendars are the calendrical systems devised and used by the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica. In addition to the basic function of a calendar—defining and organizing periods of time in a way that allows events to be fixed, ordered and noted relative to each other and some...
, first advances in astronomy, monumental sculpture (Olmec heads) and jade
Jade
Jade is an ornamental stone.The term jade is applied to two different metamorphic rocks that are made up of different silicate minerals:...
work. They were forerunner of later cultures such as Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan – also written Teotihuacán, with a Spanish orthographic accent on the last syllable – is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, just 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas...
, north of Mexico City, the Zapotecs in Oaxaca and the Mayas in southern Mexico, Belize
Belize
Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...
and Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
. While empires rose and fell, the basic cultural underpinnings of the Mesoamerica stayed the same until the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. These included cities centered on plazas, temples usually built on pyramid bases and often, Mesoamerican ball courts, based on a mostly common cosmology.
While art forms such as a cave paintings and rock etchings are dated to much earlier, the history of Mexican art is considered to begin with that of Mesoamerican art created by sedentary cultures which built cities and often, dominions. While the art of Mesoamerica is more varied and extends over more time than anywhere else in the Americas, artistic styles also show a number of similarities. Unlike modern Western art, almost all Mesoamerican art was created to serve religious or political needs, rather than art for art’s sake. It is also strongly based on nature, the surrounding political reality and the gods.Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
states that "Mesoamerican art is a logic of forms, lines, and volumes that is as the same time a cosmology." He goes on to state that this focus on space and time is highly distinct from European naturalism based on the representation of the human body. Even simple designs such as stepped frets
Fretwork
Fretwork is an interlaced decorative design that is either carved in low relief on a solid background, or cut out with a fretsaw, coping saw, jigsaw or scroll saw. Most fretwork patterns are geometric in design. The materials most commonly used are wood and metal. Fretwork is used to adorn...
on buildings fall into this representation of space/time, life and the gods.
Tehuacán
Tehuacán is the second largest city in the Mexican state of Puebla, nestled in the Southeast Valley of Tehuacán, bordering the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. The 2010 census reported a population of 248,716 in the city and 274,906 in its surrounding municipality of the same name, of which it serves...
area around 1,500 BCE and then spread to Veracruz
Veracruz
Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave , is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is...
, the Valley of Mexico
Valley of Mexico
The Valley of Mexico is a highlands plateau in central Mexico roughly coterminous with the present-day Distrito Federal and the eastern half of the State of Mexico. Surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, the Valley of Mexico was a centre for several pre-Columbian civilizations, including...
, Guerrero
Guerrero
Guerrero officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Guerrero is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 81 municipalities and its capital city is Chilpancingo....
, Oaxaca
Oaxaca
Oaxaca , , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 571 municipalities; of which 418 are governed by the system of customs and traditions...
, Chiapas
Chiapas
Chiapas officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas is one of the 31 states that, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 118 municipalities and its capital city is Tuxtla Gutierrez. Other important cites in Chiapas include San Cristóbal de las...
and the Pacific coast of Guatemala. The earliest of these are mostly female figures, thought to be associated with fertility rites because of their often oversized hips and thighs as well as a number with children in arms or nursing. When male figures appear, they are most often soldiers. The production of these ceramic figures, which would later include animals and other forms, remained an important art form for 2000 years. In the early Olmec period, most were small but large scale ceramic sculptures were also produced as large 55 cm. After the middle Pre Classic, ceramic sculpture declined in the center of Mexico except in the Chupícuaro
Chupícuaro (archaeological site)
Chupícuaro is an important prehispanic archeological site from the late preclassical or formative period; located in the northern mesoamerican border, west of the Mexican Plateau, it is on hills nearby the Lerma River and its tributary Coroneo or Tiger River; currently most part is under water by...
region. In the Mayan areas, the art disappears in the late Pre Classic, to reappear in the Classic, mostly in the form of whistles and other musical instruments. In a few areas, such as parts of Veracruz, the creation of ceramic figures would continue uninterrupted until the Spanish conquest, but as a handcraft, not a formal art.
Mesoamerican painting is found in various expressions from murals, to the creation of codices and the painting of ceramic objects. Evidence of painting goes back at least to 1800 BCE and continues uninterrupted in one form or another until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. Although it may have occurred earlier, the earliest known cases of the artistic painting of monumental buildings occur in the early Classic period with the Mayas at Uaxactun
Uaxactun
Uaxactun is an ancient ruin of the Maya civilization, located in the Petén Basin region of the Maya lowlands, in the present-day department of Petén, Guatemala. The site lies some north of the major center of Tikal...
and Tikal
Tikal
Tikal is one of the largest archaeological sites and urban centres of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. It is located in the archaeological region of the Petén Basin in what is now northern Guatemala...
and in Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan – also written Teotihuacán, with a Spanish orthographic accent on the last syllable – is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, just 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas...
with walls painted in various colors. Paints were made from animal, vegetable and mineral pigments and bases. Most painting focuses one or more human figures, which may be realistic or stylized, masculine, feminine or asexual. They may be naked or richly attired, but the social status of each figure is indicated in some way. Scenes often depict war, sacrifice, the roles of the gods or the acts of nobles. However, some common scenes with common people have been found as well. Other subjects included gods, symbols and animals from nature. Mesoamerican painting was bi-dimensional with no efforts to create the illusion of depth. However, movement is often represented.
Non ceramic sculpture in Mesoamerica began with the modification of animal bones, with the oldest known piece being an animal skull from Tequixquiac
Tequixquiac
Santiago Tequixquiac is the seat of the municipality of Tequixquiac located in the northeastern part of the state of Mexico in Mexico, although both are commonly called Tequixquiac. The town is located at a northern pass leading out of the Valley of Mexico and about 120 km northeast of the...
that dates to between 10,000 and 8,000 BCE. Most Mesoamerican sculpture is of stone, and while relief work on buildings is the most dominant, free standing sculpture was done as well. Free standing three dimensional stone sculpture began with the Olmecs, with the most famous example being the giant Olmec stone heads. However, this would disappear for the rest of the Mesoamerican period in favor of relief work until the late Post Classic with the Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
s.
Veracruz
Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave , is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is...
and the coastal area of Tabasco
Tabasco
Tabasco officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Tabasco is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 17 municipalities and its capital city is Villahermosa....
, in places such as San Lorenzo, with the building large temples on pyramid bases, which can still be seen in sites such as Montenegro, Chiapa de Corzo
Chiapa de Corzo (Mesoamerican site)
Chiapa de Corzo is an archaeological site of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, located in the Central Depression of Chiapas of present-day Mexico. It rose to prominence during the Middle Formative period, becoming a regional center or capital that controlled trade along the Grijalva River. By then, its...
and La Venta
La Venta
La Venta is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Olmec civilization located in the present-day Mexican state of Tabasco. Some of the artifacts have been moved to the museum "Parque - Museo de La Venta", which is in Villahermosa, the capital of Tabasco....
. This practice would then spread to the Oaxaca
Oaxaca
Oaxaca , , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 571 municipalities; of which 418 are governed by the system of customs and traditions...
area and the Valley of Mexico
Valley of Mexico
The Valley of Mexico is a highlands plateau in central Mexico roughly coterminous with the present-day Distrito Federal and the eastern half of the State of Mexico. Surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, the Valley of Mexico was a centre for several pre-Columbian civilizations, including...
, with cities such as Monte Albán
Monte Albán
Monte Albán is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site in the Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán Municipality in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca...
, Cuicuilco
Cuicuilco
Cuicuilco is an important archaeological Mesoamerican Middle and Late Formative period site located on the southern shore of the Lake Texcoco in the southeastern Valley of Mexico. Today, it is a significant archaeological site that was occupied during the Early Formative until its destruction in...
and Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan – also written Teotihuacán, with a Spanish orthographic accent on the last syllable – is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, just 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas...
. These cities, like those later on, had a nucleus of one or more plazas, with temples, palaces and Mesoamerican ball courts. Alignment of these structures was based on the cardinal directions and astronomy for ceremonial purposes such as focusing the sun’s rays during the spring equinox on a sculpted or painted image. This was generally tied to calendar systems. Relief sculpture and/or painting were created as the structures were built. By the latter Pre Classic, just about all monumental structures in Mesoamerica would have extensive relief work. Some of the best known examples of this is Monte Albán, Teotihuacan and Tula
Tula, Hidalgo
Tula, formally, Tula de Allende, is a town and one of the 84 municipalities of Hidalgo, in central-eastern Mexico. The municipality covers an area of 305.8 km² , and as of 2005, the municipality had a total population of 93,296, with 28,432 in the town...
. Pre Hispanic reliefs are general lineal in design and low, medium and high reliefs can be found. While this technique is often favored for narrative scenes elsewhere in the world, Mesoamerican reliefs tend to focus on a single figure. The only time reliefs are used in the narrative sense is when several relief steles are placed together. The best relief work is considered to be from the Mayas, especially from Yaxchilan
Yaxchilan
Yaxchilan is an ancient Maya city located on the bank of the Usumacinta River in what is now the state of Chiapas, Mexico. In the Late Classic Period Yaxchilan was one of the most powerful Maya states along the course of the Usumacinta, with Piedras Negras as its major rival...
.
Writing and art were not distinct as they have been for European cultures. Writing was considered to be art and art was often covering in writing. The reason for this is that both sought to record history and the culture’s interpretation of reality.(salvatvolp14) Manuscript writing on paper or other book like material then bundles into codices. The art of reading and writing was strictly designated to the highest priest classes, as this ability was a source of their power over society. The pictograms or glyphs of this writing system
Mesoamerican writing systems
Mesoamerica, like India, Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt, is one of the few places in the world where writing has developed independently. Mesoamerican scripts deciphered to date are logosyllabic, combining the use of logograms with a syllabary, and they are often called hieroglyphic scripts...
were more formal and rigid than image found on murals and other art as they were considered to be mostly symbolic, representing formulas related to astronomical events, genealogy and historic events. Most surviving pre Hispanic codices come from the very late Mesoamerican period and very early colonial period, as more of these escaped destruction over history. For this reason, more is known about the Aztec Empire than the Mayan cultures.
Colonial era
Since the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Mexican art has been an ongoing and complex interaction between the traditions of Europe and native perspectives. After the conquest, the first artistic efforts were directed at evangelization efforts and the related task of building churches. The Spanish initially co-opted many indigenous stonemasons and sculptors to build churches and other monuments to the new religion. These craftsmen were taught European motifs, designs and techniques, but this early work, called “tequitqui” (NahuatlNahuatl
Nahuatl is thought to mean "a good, clear sound" This language name has several spellings, among them náhuatl , Naoatl, Nauatl, Nahuatl, Nawatl. In a back formation from the name of the language, the ethnic group of Nahuatl speakers are called Nahua...
for “vassal”), has a number of indigenous elements to it such as flattened faces and high-stiff relief.
The earliest of Mexico’s colonial artists were Spanish born and who came to Mexico during their careers. This included monks such as Fray Alonso López de Herrera. Later, most artists were born in Mexico but trained in European techniques, often from imported engravings. This dependence on imported copies meant that Mexican works would preserve styles for a while after it had gone out of fashion in Europe. In the colonial period, artists worked in guilds, not independently. Each guild had its own rules, precepts and mandates in technique which were not meant to encourage innovation.
The very first monasteries built in and around Mexico City, such as the monasteries on the slopes of Popocatepetl
Monasteries on the slopes of Popocatépetl
The Monasteries on the slopes of Popocatépetl World Heritage Site are fourteen 16th century monasteries which were built by the Augustinians, the Franciscans and the Dominicans in order to evangelize the areas south and east of the Popocatépetl volcano in central Mexico...
, had Renaissance
Renaissance architecture
Renaissance architecture is the architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 17th centuries in different regions of Europe, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought and material culture. Stylistically, Renaissance...
, Plateresque
Plateresque
Plateresque, meaning "in the manner of a silversmith" , was an artistic movement, especially architectural, traditionally held to be exclusive to Spain and its territories, which appeared between the late Gothic and early Renaissance in the late 15th century, and spread over the next two centuries...
, Gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
and/or Moorish
Moorish architecture
Moorish architecture is the western term used to describe the articulated Berber-Islamic architecture of North Africa and Al-Andalus.-Characteristic elements:...
elements. They were relatively undecorated with building efforts going more towards high walls and fortress features to ward off attacks. However, the construction of more elaborate churches with large quantities of religious artwork would define much of the artistic output of the colonial period. Most of the production was related to the teaching and reinforcement of Church doctrine, but it also had political purposes such as the vying for power among religious orders such as the Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians. Religious art also set the rationale for Spanish domination over the indigenous. Today, colonial era structures and other works can be found nearly all over the country, but the most intense concentration is in the central highlands around Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
. While colonial art remained almost completely European in style, with muted colors and no indication of movement, the addition of native elements which began with the tequitqui would continue. They would never be the center of the works but rather decorative motifs and filler such as the use of native foliage, pineapples, corn and cacao. Much of this can be seen on portals as well as large frescos that often decorated not only the interior of churches but also the walls of monastery area closed to the public.
The dominant form of art and architecture during most of the colonial period was Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
. In1577, Pope Gregory XIII
Pope Gregory XIII
Pope Gregory XIII , born Ugo Boncompagni, was Pope from 1572 to 1585. He is best known for commissioning and being the namesake for the Gregorian calendar, which remains the internationally-accepted civil calendar to this date.-Youth:He was born the son of Cristoforo Boncompagni and wife Angela...
created the Academy of Saint Luke with the purpose of breaking with Renaissance style. The idea was to use painting and sculpture in and on churches to create iconography to teach and reinforce Church doctrine. In Spain, the first works in Baroque include the Patio of the Kings in El Escorial
El Escorial
The Royal Seat of San Lorenzo de El Escorial is a historical residence of the king of Spain, in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, about 45 kilometres northwest of the capital, Madrid, in Spain. It is one of the Spanish royal sites and functions as a monastery, royal palace, museum, and...
monastery.
Spanish Baroque was transplanted to Mexico and then developed into its own varieties from the late 16th to late 18th centuries. Baroque art and architecture were mostly applied to churches. One reason for this was that in nearly all cities, towns and villages, the church was the center of the community, with streets in a regular pattern leading away from it. This reflected the Church’s role as the center of community life. Church design in New Spain
New Spain
New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...
tended to follow is rectilinear pattern of squares and cubes, rather than contemporary European churches that favored curves and orbs. Mexican Baroque churches tend to be more introverted spaces than their European counterparts, especially focused on the main altar. The purpose was contemplation and meditation. The rich ornamentation was created to keep attention focused on the central themes. This was especially true of the main altar.
One important element of Mexican Baroque was in columns and pilaster
Pilaster
A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....
s, in particular the part between the capitol
Capitol
Capitol may refer to:**the Capitoline Hill in Rome **a Capitolium, the temple for the Capitoline Triad in many cities of the Roman Empire...
and the base, which can be categorized in six different types including Salomonic
Solomonic column
The Solomonic column, also called Barley-sugar column, is a helical column, characterized by a spiraling twisting shaft like a corkscrew...
and estipite
Estipite
The estipite column is a type of column or pilaster typical of the Churrigueresque baroque style of Spain and Spanish America used in the 18th century. It has the shape of an inverted cone or obelisk....
(an inverted truncated pyramid) in the later colonial period. Even if the rest of the structure was not covered in decoration, such as in the “purist” style, columns and spaces between doubled columns still were profusely decorated. As it developed in Mexico, the Baroque split into a number of sub-styles and techniques. “Estucado” Baroque was purely decorative and did not employ any architectural features. Features were molded from stucco with intricate detail and either covered in gold leaf or paint. This form reached its height in the 17th century in Puebla and Oaxaca. Main surviving examples include the Chapel del Rosario in Puebla
Puebla, Puebla
The city and municipality of Puebla is the capital of the state of Puebla, and one of the five most important colonial cities in Mexico. Being a planned city, it is located to the east of Mexico City and west of Mexico's main port, Veracruz, on the main route between the two.The city was founded...
and the Church at Tonantzintla. One reason this style fell out of favor was that the stucco work would eventually dissolve.
Talavera Baroque was a variety mostly confined to the states of Puebla
Puebla
Puebla officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Puebla is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 217 municipalities and its capital city is Puebla....
and Tlaxcala
Tlaxcala
Tlaxcala officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Tlaxcala is one of the 31 states which along with the Federal District comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided into 60 municipalities and its capital city is Tlaxcala....
. The main defining feature was the use of hand painted ceramic tiles of the Talavera type
Talavera (pottery)
Talavera pottery of Puebla, Mexico is a type of majolica pottery, which is distinguished by a milky-white glaze. Authentic Talavera pottery only comes from the city of Puebla and the nearby communities of Atlixco, Cholula, and Tecali, because of the quality of the natural clay found there and the...
. This style came into being here because of this pottery industry. Tiles are mostly found on the bell towers, domes and main portals of the exterior. They are also found interspersed on the rest of the facade as accents to brickwork. This type of Baroque first appeared in the 17th century and reached its height in the 18th. While wholesale use of this style is mostly confined to two states, elements of this tile work appear, especially in domes, in many other parts of the country. In the late Baroque era, artists in the provincial area of New Spain created intricate textured church facades and interiors similar to those of the major cities. However, it had a more two-dimensional quality, which led it to be called Mestizo Baroque or Folk Baroque. The two-level effect was less based on sculptural modeling and more on drilling into the surface to create a screen like effect. This has some similarities to pre Hispanic stone and wood carving allowing elements of indigenous art tradition to survive. Other Baroque styles in Mexico would not adorn all of the surfaces of the interior or exterior but rather focus their ornamentation on columns, pilasters and the spaces between pairs of these supports. Medallions and niches with statues commonly appear between columns and pilasters, especially around main portals and windows. Decorative patterns in columns after were wavy grooves (called estrías móviles).
Another late Baroque style in Mexico is often called Mexican Churrigueresque
Churrigueresque
Churrigueresque refers to a Spanish Baroque style of elaborate sculptural architectural ornament which emerged as a manner of stucco decoration in Spain in the late 17th century and was used up to about 1750, marked by extreme, expressive and florid decorative detailing, normally found above the...
after the Spanish Churriguera family which made altarpieces at this time. However, the more technical term for this very exuberant, anti classical style is ultra Baroque. It originated in Spain as architectural decoration, spreading to sculpture and even furniture carving. In Spain, the definitive element of ultra Baroque was the use of the Salomonic column along with the profuse decoration. In Mexico, the Salomonic column appears as well but one main distinctive aspect of Mexican ultra Baroque is the use of the “estipite” column in both buildings and altarpieces. This is not a true column, but rather an elongated base which is in the form of a inverted, truncated pyramid. This can be seen in the Mexico City Cathedral in both the Altar of the Kings and the main portal of the Tabernacle. Ultra Baroque was introduced by Jerónimo Balbás
Jerónimo Balbás
Jerónimo Balbás was a Spanish architect active during the 18th century. He created the altarpiece for the tabernacle of the Seville Cathedral, which was destroyed in 1824. He was also involved in working on parts of other Spanish cathedrals. In 1718 he moved to Mexico where he worked as an...
into Mexico, whose design for an altar at the Seville Cathedral
Seville Cathedral
The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See , better known as Seville Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Seville . It is the largest Gothic cathedral and the third-largest church in the world....
was the inspiration for the Altar of the Kings, constructed in 1717. Balbás used estípites to convey a sense of fluidity, but his Mexican followers would flatten the facades and align the estepites, with less dynamic results. This is what Lorenzo Rodríguez did to Balbás design for the Altar of the Kings. He also created a stronger horizontal division between the first and second levels, which derived Mexican ultra Baroque from the Spanish version. The ultra Baroque appeared at the same time as when Mexican mines were producing great wealth, prompting numerous building projects. Much of Mexican ultra Baroque can be seen in and the city of Guanajuato and its mines. For this reason, the style became more developed in Mexico than in Spain.
Baroque painting became firmly established in Mexico by the middle of the 17th century. The Baroque painting style became firmly established in Mexico with the work of Spaniard Sebastián López de Arteaga. His painting is exemplified by the canvas called “Doubting Thomas” from 1643. In this work, the Apostle Thomas is shown inserting his finger in the wound in Christ’s side to emphasize Christ’s suffering. The caption below reads “the Word made flesh” is an example of Baroque’s didactic purpose. One difference between most painters in Mexico and their European counterparts what that they preferred realistic directness and clarity over fantastic colors, elongated proportions and extreme spatial relationships. The goal was to create a realistic scene in which the viewer could imagine himself a part of. This was a style created by Caravaggio
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...
in Italy, which became popular with artists in Seville
Seville
Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...
, from which many migrants to New Spain came. Similarly, Baroque free standing sculptures feature life-size scale, realistic skin tones and the simulation of gold-threaded garments through a technique called “estofado,” the application of paint over gold leaf.
The most important later influence to Mexican and other painters in Latin America was the work of Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, known through copies made through engravings and mezzotint
Mezzotint
Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple...
techniques. He paintings were copied and reworked and became the standard for both religious and secular art. These later Baroque paintings moved from the confines of altarpieces to colossal freestanding canvases on church interiors. One of the best known Mexican painters of this kind of work was Cristóbal de Villalpando
Cristóbal de Villalpando
Cristóbal de Villalpando was a Mexican painter. He painted prolifically and produced many Baroque works visible in several Mexican cathedrals, including the cathedrals in Querétaro and Mexico City.. He married María de Mendoza in 1669, and later had four children.-References:...
. His work can be seen in the sacristy
Sacristy
A sacristy is a room for keeping vestments and other church furnishings, sacred vessels, and parish records.The sacristy is usually located inside the church, but in some cases it is an annex or separate building...
of the Mexico City Cathedral, which was done between 1684 and 1686. These canvases were glued directly onto the walls with arched frames to stabilize them, placed just under the vaults of the ceiling. Even the fresco work of the 16th century was not usually this large. Another one of Villalpando’s notable works is the cupola of the Puebla Cathedral
Puebla Cathedral
Puebla Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral in the city of Puebla, in Puebla, Mexico. It is a colonial cathedral, and is the see of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Puebla de los Angeles. The cathedral's bishop is Víctor Sánchez Espinosa...
in 1688. He used Rubens’ brush techniques and the shape of the structure to create a composition of clouds with angels and saints, from which a dove descends to represent the Holy Spirit. The light from the cupola’s windows is meant to symbolize God’s grace.
Colonial religious art was sponsored by both Church authorities and private patrons. Sponsoring the rich ornamentation of churches was a way for the very wealthy to gain prestige. In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Mexico City was one of the wealthiest in the world, mostly due to mining and agriculture, and sufficient to support a large art scene. While most commissioned art was for churches, there were also secular works commissioned as well. Portrait painting was known relatively early in the colonial period, mostly of viceroys and archbishops. Beginning in the late Baroque period, portrait painting of local nobility became a significant genre. Two notable painters of this type are brothers Nicolás and Juan Rodríguez Juárez. These works followed European models, with symbols of rank and titles either displayed unattached in the outer portions or worked into another element of the paintings such as curtains. Another type of secular colonial painting is called “casta,” referring to the mostly racially based caste system of New Spain
Casta
Casta is a Portuguese and Spanish term used in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mainly in Spanish America to describe as a whole the mixed-race people which appeared in the post-Conquest period...
. These were often commissioned by Spanish functionaries as souvenirs of Mexico. After Independence
Mexican War of Independence
The Mexican War of Independence was an armed conflict between the people of Mexico and the Spanish colonial authorities which started on 16 September 1810. The movement, which became known as the Mexican War of Independence, was led by Mexican-born Spaniards, Mestizos and Amerindians who sought...
, production of these paintings stopped and the later political policies of a “mestizo” identity resulted in the hiding of these paintings until very beginning of the 21st century, when they began to be studied again.
Mexico was a crossroads of trade in the colonial period, with goods from Asia and Europe mixing with those natively produced. This convergence is most evident in the decorative arts of New Spain. It was popular among the upper classes to have a main public room, called a salon de estrado, to be covered in rugs and cushions for women to recline in Moorish fashion. Stools and later chairs and settees were added for men. Folding screens were introduced from Japan, with Mexican styles ones then produced called “biombos” The earliest of these Mexican made screens had oriental designs but later ones had European and Mexican themes. One important example of this is a screen with the conquest of Mexico one side and a aerial view of Mexico City on the other at the Franz Mayer Museum
Franz Mayer Museum
The Franz Mayer Museum , in Mexico City opened in 1986 to house, display and maintain Latin America’s largest collection of decorative arts. The collection was amassed by stockbroker and financial professional Franz Mayer, who collected fine artworks, books, furniture, ceramics, textiles and many...
.
The last colonial era art institution to be established was the Academy of San Carlos
Academy of San Carlos
The Academy of San Carlos is located at 22 Academia Street in just northeast of the main plaza of Mexico City. It was the first major art academy and the first art museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1781 as the School of Engraving and moved to the Academia Street location about 10 years later...
in 1783. While the depiction of saints consumed most artistic efforts, they were not without political effects. The most important of these was the rise of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a American rather than European saint, representative of a distinct identity. By the late 18th century, Spain’s colonies were becoming culturally independent from Spain, including its arts. The Academy was established by the Spanish Crown to regain control of artistic expression and the propaganda it disseminated. This school was staffed by Spanish artists in each of the major disciplines, with the first director being Antonio Gil . The school also became home to a number of plaster casts of classic statues from the San Fernando Fine Arts Academy
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando , located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery....
in Spain brought here for teaching purposes. These casts can still be seen on display in the Academy's central patio.
Around the same time, the Crown also promoted the establishment in Mexico of the Neoclassical
Neoclassical
Neoclassical may refer to:General:* Neoclassicism, any of a number of movements in the fine arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture beginning in the 17th Century...
style of art and architecture, which had become popular in Spain. This style was a reinterpretation of Greco-Roman references and its use was a way to reinforce European dominance in the Spain’s colonies. The most notable Neoclassical artist from the Academy at the end of the colonial period was Manuel Tolsá
Manuel Tolsá
Manuel Tolsá was a prolific Neoclassical architect and sculptor in Spain and Mexico.-Biography:...
. He first taught sculpture at the academy and then became its second director. Tolsá designed a number of Neoclassical buildings
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
in Mexico but his best known work is an equestrian status of King Charles IV in bronze cast in 1803 and originally placed in the Zocalo
Zócalo
The Zócalo is the main plaza or square in the heart of the historic center of Mexico City. The plaza used to be known simply as the "Main Square" or "Arms Square," and today its formal name is Plaza de la Constitución...
. Today it can be seen at the Museo Nacional de Arte
Museo Nacional de Arte
The Museo Nacional de Arte is the Mexican national art museum, located in the historical center of Mexico City. The museum is housed in a neoclassical building at No. 8 Tacuba, Col. Centro, Mexico City. It includes a large collection representing the history of Mexican art from the mid-sixteenth...
.
19th century
The Academy of San Carlos remained the center of academic painting and the most prestigious art institution in Mexico until the Mexican War of IndependenceMexican War of Independence
The Mexican War of Independence was an armed conflict between the people of Mexico and the Spanish colonial authorities which started on 16 September 1810. The movement, which became known as the Mexican War of Independence, was led by Mexican-born Spaniards, Mestizos and Amerindians who sought...
. During this war it was closed. Despite its association with the Spanish Crown and European painting tradition, the Academy was reopened by the new government after Mexico gained full independence in 1821. Its former Spanish faculty and students either died during the war or returned to Spain, but when it reopened it again attracted the best art students of the country, and would continue to emphasize classical European traditions until the early 20th century. The academy was renamed to the National Academy of San Carlos. The new government continued to keep Neoclassical in favor as it considered the Baroque as a symbol of colonialism. It continued in favor through the reign of Maximilian I
Maximilian I of Mexico
Maximilian I was the only monarch of the Second Mexican Empire.After a distinguished career in the Austrian Navy, he was proclaimed Emperor of Mexico on April 10, 1864, with the backing of Napoleon III of France and a group of Mexican monarchists who sought to revive the Mexican monarchy...
although President Benito Juárez
Benito Juárez
Benito Juárez born Benito Pablo Juárez García, was a Mexican lawyer and politician of Zapotec origin from Oaxaca who served five terms as president of Mexico: 1858–1861 as interim, 1861–1865, 1865–1867, 1867–1871 and 1871–1872...
supported it only reluctantly, considering its European focus as a vestige of colonialism.
Despite Neoclassicism’s association with European domination, it remained favored by the Mexican government after Independence and used in some major government commissions at the end of the century. However, indigenous themes would appear in paintings and sculptures. One indigenous figure depicted in Neoclassical style is Tlahuicol, done by Catalan
Catalan
Catalan is an inhabitant of CataloniaCatalan can also refer to:*Catalan people*Catalan language*Països Catalans, territories where Catalan language is spokenPersons with the surname Catalan:*Eugène Charles Catalan, a mathematician...
artist Manuel Vilar in 1851. In 1887, Porfirio Díaz
Porfirio Díaz
José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori was a Mexican-American War volunteer and French intervention hero, an accomplished general and the President of Mexico continuously from 1876 to 1911, with the exception of a brief term in 1876 when he left Juan N...
commissioned the statue of the last Aztec emperor, Cuauhtémoc
Cuauhtémoc
Cuauhtémoc was the Aztec ruler of Tenochtitlan from 1520 to 1521...
, which can still be seen on Paseo de la Reforma
Paseo de la Reforma
Paseo de la Reforma is a wide avenue that runs in a straight line, cutting diagonally across Mexico City. It was designed by Ferdinand von Rosenzweig in the 1860s and modeled after the great boulevards of Europe, such as Vienna's Ringstrasse or the Champs-Élysées in Paris...
. Cuauhtémoc is depicted with a toga-like cloak with a feathered headdress similar to an Etruscan or Trojan warrior rather than an Aztec emperor. The base has elements reminiscent of both Mitla and Roman architecture. This base contains bronze plates depicting scenes from the Spanish conquest, but focusing on the indigenous figures. There were two reasons for this shift in preferred subject. The first was that Mexican society denigrated colonial culture with the indigenous past seen as more truly Mexican. The other factor was a worldwide movement among artists to confront society which began around 1830. In Mexico, this anti establishment sentiment was directed at the Academy of San Carlos and its European focus.
In the first half of the 19th century, the Romantic style of painting was introduced into Mexico and the rest of Latin America by foreign travelers interested in the newly independent country. One of these was Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
n artist Johann Moritz Rugendas
Johann Moritz Rugendas
Johann Moritz Rugendas , was a German painter, famous for his works depicting landscapes and ethnographic subjects in several countries in the Americas, in the first half of the 19th century....
, who lived in the country from 1831 to 1834. He painted scenes with dynamic composition and bright colors in accordance with Romantic style, looking for striking, sublime and beautiful images in Mexico as well as other areas of Latin America. However much of Rugendas's works are sketches for major canvases, many of which were never executed Others include Englishman Daniel Egerton
Daniel Egerton
-Life:Egerton was born in the city of London on 14 April 1772. According to various accounts, presumably supplied by himself, he was 'bred to the law in a public office.' Another source says, however, 'he was in business near Whitechapel, and made his first attempt on the stage in this assumed name...
, who painted landscapes in the British Romantic tradition and German Karl Nebel who primarily created lithographs of the various social and ethnic populations of the country.
A number of native-born artists at the time followed the European Romantic painters in their desire to document the various cultures of Mexico. These painters were called costumbristas, a word deriving from costumbre (custom). The styles of these painters were not always strictly Romantic, involving other styles as well. Most of these painters were from the upper classes and educated in Europe. While the European painters viewed subjects as exotic, the costumbristas had a more nationalistic sense of their home countries. One of these painters was Agustín Arrieta from Puebla, who applied realistic techniques to scenes from his home city, capturing its brightly painted tiles and ceramics. His scenes often involved everyday life such as women working in kitchen and even depicted black and Afro-Peruvian vendors.
In the mid- to late 19th century, Latin American academies began to shift away from severe Neoclassicism to what is sometimes known as “academic realism.” This shifted to a less idealized and simplified depiction to more realistic and with emphasis on details. Scenes in this style were most often portraits of the upper classes and battles, especially those from the Independence period and Biblical scenes. When the Academy of San Carlos was reopened after a short closure in 1843, its new Spanish and Italian faculty pushed this realist style. Despite government support and nationalist themes, native artists were generally shorted in favor of Europeans. One of the most important painters in Mexico in the mid 19th century was Catalan Pelegrín Clavé, who painted some landscapes but best known for his depictions of the intellectual elite of Mexico City. Realism painters also attempted to portray Aztec culture and people, depicting setting inhabited by indigenous people, live indigenous models and costumes based on those in Conquest era codices. One of these was Félix Parra, whose depictions of the conquest empathized with the suffering of the indigenous. In 1869, José Obregón painted “The Discovery of Pulque” basing his depictions of architecture on Mixtec
Mixtec
The Mixtec are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples inhabiting the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla in a region known as La Mixteca. The Mixtecan languages form an important branch of the Otomanguean language family....
codices, but misrepresented temples as a setting for a throne.
The art of the 19th century after Independence is considered to have declined, especially during the last decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, known as the Porfirato, named after Porfirio Díaz who ruled the country for over three decades. During this time, painting, sculpture and the decorative arts was mostly limited to imitation of European styles, especially of religious themes.
20th century
The Academy of San Carlos continued to advocate classic, European-style training of its artists until 1913. In this year, the academy was partially integrated with the national university, the University of Mexico (now UNAMUnam
UNAM or UNaM may refer to:* National University of Misiones, a National University in Posadas, Argentina*National Autonomous University of Mexico , the large public autonomous university based in Mexico City...
). Between 1929 and the 1950s, the academy’s architecture program would be split off as a department of the university and the programs in painting, sculpture and engraving were renamed the National School of Expressive Arts now the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (ENAP). Both would move to the south of the city in mid century, to Ciudad Universitaria
Ciudad Universitaria
Ciudad Universitaria , Mexico, is UNAM's main campus, located in Coyoacán borough in the southern part of Mexico City. Designed by architects Mario Pani and Enrique del Moral, it encloses the Olympic Stadium, about 40 faculties and institutes, the Cultural Center, an ecological reserve, the Central...
and Xochimilco
Xochimilco
Xochimilco is one of the sixteen delegaciones or boroughs within Mexican Federal District. The borough is centered on the formerly independent city of Xochimilco, which was established on what was the southern shore of Lake Xochimilco in the pre-Hispanic period...
respectively, leaving only some graduate programs in fine arts in the original academy building in the historic center
Historic center of Mexico City
The historic center of Mexico City is also known as the "Centro" or "Centro Histórico." This neighborhood is focused on the Zócalo or main plaza in Mexico City and extends in all directions for a number of blocks with its farthest extent being west to the Alameda Central The Zocalo is the largest...
. ENAP remains one of the main centers for the training of Mexico’s artists.
While a shift to more indigenous/Mexican themes appears in the 19th century, the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920 would have a dramatic effect on Mexican art. The end of the conflict resulted in power in the hands of the Partido Revolucionario Nacional (today Partido Revolucionario Institucional), which took it into a socialist direction. This made the government allied with many of the intellectuals and artists in Mexico City. The government commissioned murals for public buildings to reinforce its political messages including those which emphasized Mexican rather than European themes. It was not created for popular or commercial tastes; however, it gained recognition not only in Mexico, but in the United States.) This production of art in conjunction with government propaganda is known as the Mexican Modernist School or the Mexican Muralist Movement and it redefined art in Mexico. Octavio Paz gives José Vasconcelos
José Vasconcelos
José Vasconcelos Calderón was a Mexican writer, philosopher and politician. He is one of the most influential and controversial personalities in the development of modern Mexico. His philosophy of "indigenismo" affected all aspects of Mexican sociocultural, political, and economic...
credit for initiating the Muralist movement in Mexico, by commissioning the best-known painters in1921 to decorate the walls of various public buildings. The commissioning had political aims related to the glorification of the Mexican Revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...
and related to redefining the Mexican people vis-a-vis their indigenous and Spanish past. The first of these commissioned paintings were at San Ildefonso
San Ildefonso College
The San Ildefonso College currently is a museum and cultural center in Mexico City, considered to be the birthplace of the Mexican muralism movement. San Ildefonso began as a prestigious Jesuit boarding school, and after the Reform War, it gained educational prestige again as National Preparatory...
done by Fernando Leal, Fermín Revueltas, 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...
and 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...
. The first true fresco in the building was the work of Jean Charlot
Jean Charlot
Louis Henri Jean Charlot was a French painter and illustrator, active in Mexico and the United States. Charlot was born in Paris. His father, Henri, owned an import-export business and was a Russian-born émigré, albeit one who supported the Bolshevik cause. His mother Anna was herself an artist...
. However, a number of technical errors were made in the construction of these murals and a number of them began to blister and were covered in wax to preserve them. Roberto Montenegro
Roberto Montenegro
Roberto Montenegro Nervo was a Mexican painter, illustrator, and stage designer....
painted the former church and monastery of San Pedro y San Pablo
San Pedro y San Pablo College (Museum of Light)
The San Pedro y San Pablo College complex has seen a lot of changes since it was built in late 16th and early 17th centuries, and today the church portion of the complex is home to the Museo de la Luz sponsored by the National Autonomous University of Mexico...
. But the mural in the church was painted in tempura and soon began to flake. In the monastery area, Montenegro painted the "Feast of the Holy Cross" which has a figure of Vasconcelos, as the protector of the Muralists. However, this was later blanked out and a figure of a woman painted over it.
The first main protagonist in the production of modern murals in Mexico is Dr. Atl
Dr. Atl
Gerardo Murillo was a Mexican painter and writer who signed his works "Dr. Atl". He was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, where he began the study of painting at an early age, under Felipe Castro...
. Dr Atl was born with the name of Gerard Murillo in Guadalajara in 1875. He changed his name in order to identify himself as Mexican. Alt also worked to promote Mexico’s folk art and handcrafts
Mexican handcrafts and folk art
Mexican handcrafts and folk art is a complex collection of items made with various materials and intended for utilitarian, decorative or other purposes. Some of the items produced by hand in this country include ceramics, wall hangings, vases, furniture, textiles and much more...
. While he had some success as a painter in Guadalajara, his radical ideas against academia and the government prompted him to move to more liberal Mexico City. In 1910, months before the start of the Mexican Revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...
, Atl painted the first modern mural in Mexico. He taught a number of the major artists to follow him including those who would soon dominate Mexican mural painting.
The muralist movement reached its height in the 1930s with three main protagonists, 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...
and 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...
. It is the most studied part of Mexico’s art history. All three were artists trained in classical European techniques and many of their early works are imitations of then-fashionable European paintings styles, some of which were adapted to Mexican themes. The political situation in Mexico from the 1920s to 1950s and the influence of Dr. Atl prompted these artists to break with European traditions, using bold indigenous images, lots of color and depictions of human activity, especially of the masses, in contrast to the solemn and detached art of Europe. Preferred mediums generally excluded traditional canvases and church porticos and instead were the large, then undecorated walls of Mexico’s government buildings. The main goal in many of these paintings was the glorification of Mexico’s pre Hispanic past as a definition of Mexican identity. They had success in both Mexico and United States, which brought them fame and wealth as well as a number of Mexican and American students.
These muralists revived the fresco technique for their mural work, although Siqueiros moved to industrial techniques and materials such as the application of pyroxilin, a commercial enamel used for airplanes and automobiles. One of Rivera’s earliest mural efforts emblazoned the courtyard of the Ministry of Education with a series of dancing tehuanas (natives of Tehuantepec
Tehuantepec
Tehuantepec is a city and municipality in the southeast of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is part of the Tehuantepec District in the west of the Istmo Region. The area was important in pre Hispanic period as part of a trade route that connected Central America with what is now the center of...
in southern Mexico). This four-year project went on to incorporate many other contemporary indigenous themes, and it eventually encompassed 124 frescoes that extended three stories high and two city blocks long. The Abelardo Rodriguez Market
Abelardo L. Rodriguez Market, Mexico City
The Abelardo L. Rodriguez Market is a traditional public market located in the historic center of Mexico City, northeast of the main plaza, or Zocalo. It was built in 1934 as a prototype for a more modern marketplace and has a number of unusual features such as day care and an auditorium...
was painted in 1933 by students of Diego Rivera, one of whom is Isamu Noguchi
Isamu Noguchi
was a prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces,...
. One other important figure of this time period is Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....
although most of her fame in life was as Diego Rivera’s wife, with their stormy relationship. While she painted canvases instead of murals, she considered as part of the Mexican Modernist School as her work and emphasized Mexican folk culture and colors.
The first to break with the nationalistic and political tone of the muralist movement was 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....
. For this reason, he was appreciated outside of Mexico before he was inside it. Tamayo was a contemporary of Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco, getting his training at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. Like them, he explored Mexican identity in his work after the Mexican Revolution; however, he rejected the political Social Realism popularized by the three other artists and was himself rejected by the new establishment. He left for New York in 1926. Here he found success which allowed him to exhibit in his native Mexico. However, his lack of support for the post Revolutionary government was controversial. For this, he mostly remained in New York, continuing with his success there and later in Europe. His rivalry with the main three Mexican muralists continued both in Mexico and internationally through the 1950s. Even a belated honorific of “The Fourth Great One” was controversial.
The first major movement after the muralists was the Rupture Movement which began in the 1950s and 1960s with painters such as José Luis Cuevas
Jose Luis Cuevas
José Luis Cuevas is a modernist painter and sculptor from Mexico. Born in 1934, Cuevas derived most of his training outside of the academies. He is considered to be one of the artists from the 1950s in the Rupture Generation that was departing from the politicized and stylized mural school of...
, Gilberto Navarro, Rafael Coronel
Rafael Coronel
Rafael Coronel is a painter from Mexico. He was the son-in-law of Diego Rivera. His representational paintings have a melancholic sobriety, and include faces from the past great masters, often floating in a diffuse haze.There are some paintings of his own in Mexico and in other countries...
, and Alfredo Casaneda and sculptor Juan Soriano
Juan Soriano
Juan Soriano was a Mexican painter and sculptor.Soriano, son of Rafael Rodríguez Soriano and Amalia Montoya Navarro, was born in Guadalajara and displayed his first painting at age 14...
. They rejected social realism and nationalism and incorporated surrealism, visual paradoxes and elements of Old World painting styles. This break would mean the later Mexican artists would generally not influenced by muralism or by Mexican folk art. José Luis Cuevas created self-portraits in which he reconstructed scenes from famous paintings by Spanish artists as 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...
, Francisco de Goya, and Picasso. Like Kahlo before him, he often drew himself but instead of being center, his image is most often to the side, as an observer. The goal was to emphasize the transformation of received visual culture. Another important figure during this time period was Swiss-Mexican Gunther Gerzso
Günther Gerzso
Gunther Gerzso was a Hungarian Mexican painter, designer and director and screenwriter for film and theatre.Born in Mexico City, in the times of the Revolution, to Oscar Gerzso , a Hungarian immigrant and Dore Wendland, German by birth. After his father's death, a few months after Gunther was...
, but his work classified as a “hard-edged variant” of Abstract Expressionism, based on clearly defined geometric forms as well as colors, with an effect that makes them look like low relief. His work was a mix of European abstraction and Latin American influences, including Mesoamerican ones.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, Neo-expressionist art is represented in Mexico by Manuel Felguerez
Manuel Felguérez
Manuel Felguérez Aspe is a Mexican abstract artist.-Biography:Felguérez was born at the Hacienda de San Agustin del Vergel, in the town of Valparaíso, Zacatecas. At the time, in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, there were still uprisings by small guerrillas and land ownership was nothing less...
, Teresa Cito, Alejandro Pinatado and Jan Hendriz. These are often abstract, non-figurative works, full of color and contract. Felguerez is a painter and engraver born in Zacatecas
Zacatecas
Zacatecas officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Zacatecas is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 58 municipalities and its capital city is Zacatecas....
in 1928, who studied in Mexico City, Paris and Russia. He had his first exhibition in abstract art in 1957. Since then, he has been prolific with up to 25 paintings per year and has done about thirty murals. In addition to these Mexican artists, one other, of Swiss German extraction, Mathias Goeritz
Mathias Goeritz
Mathias Goeritz - August 4, 1990 in Mexico City) was a well-known Mexican painter and sculptor of German origin...
was also important. Goertz was a painter sculptor and teacher active in Mexico until his death in 1990. He arrived to Mexico in 1949, after spending time in Spain, Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
and Granada. He began as a professor in Guadalajra, then opened the Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City in the 1950s. In the same decade, he created a number of public sculptures including the Torres Satélite in Ciudad Satélite
Ciudad Satélite
Satélite is a Greater Mexico City high-class suburban area located in Naucalpan, State of Mexico. Officially the name corresponds only to the homonym neighbourhood, Ciudad Satélite, founded circa 1957...
. In the 1960s, he became central in the development of abstract and other modern art along with José Cuevas and Pedro Friedeberg
Pedro Friedeberg
Pedro Friedeberg is a Mexican painter.-External Links:*...
.
In the mid 1980s, the next major movement in Mexico was “Neomexicanismo,” a slightly surreal, somewhat kitsch and post modern version of Social Realism focused on popular culture rather than history. The name of “neomexicanismo” was originally depreciative by critics of the time. Works were not necessarily murals, using other mediums such as collage and often using parody and allegory of varied cultural icons, mass media, religion and other aspects of Mexican culture. The interest of this generation of artists was traditional Mexican values, exploring their roots and often questioning or subverting them. Another common theme was Mexican culture vis-à-vis globalization.
Art from the 1990s to the present is roughly categorized as “post-modern” although this term has been used for a number of works before. Major artists associated with this label include Betsabee Romero, Monica Castillo
Monica Castillo
Mónica Joanna Castillo Rivero is a Venezuelan fashion model, famous in Europe, especially Italy, France and Germany...
, Francisco Larios, and Diego Toledo. The work of Betsabee Romeros is based on cars and car parts, especially tires. Born in 1963, her work mixes folk, Pop
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...
and modernist elements. Her most influential works are sculptural. One example is a reconstructed vintage Volkswagen Beetle
Volkswagen Beetle
The Volkswagen Type 1, widely known as the Volkswagen Beetle or Volkswagen Bug, is an economy car produced by the German auto maker Volkswagen from 1938 until 2003...
with parts of the body replaced with straw, plastic roofing and wood paneling. Another is Minimalist-Surrealist influenced piece in the shape of a car roof pushing up from under a gallery floor of wood veneer. Another important aspect of her work are the creation of art cars and prints made from carved rubber tires. Monica Castillo of Mexico City is known for her post modern, deconstructivist self-portraits in a variety of media. Francisco Larios creates ex-votos
Votive paintings of Mexico
Votive paintings in Mexico go by several names in Spanish such as “ex voto,” “retablo” or “lamina,” which refer to their purpose, place often found, or material from which they are traditionally made respectively. The painting of religious images to give thanks for a miracle or favored received in...
on his computer.
Despite maintaining an active national art scene, Mexican artists after the muralist period had a more difficult time difficult time breaking into the international art market. One reason for this is that in the Americas, Mexico City has been replaced by New York as the center of the art world, especially for patronage. Within Mexico, the government sponsorship of art in the 20th century, dominated until 2000 by the PRI party had the effect of censorship, especially on religious themes and criticism of the government. This was mostly passive, with the government giving grants to artists that conformed to government requirements. However, in 1999, La Colección Gallery opened as a permanent museum inside a Jumex
Jumex
Jumex is a brand of juice and nectar in Mexico. The Jumex brand is also popular among Hispanic consumers in the United States. Currently, the Jumex Group offers lines of fresh and preserved fruit juices, nectar, children's drinks, milk, smoothies, energy drinks, and sports drinks in...
factory in Ecatepec
Ecatepec de Morelos
Ecatepec City, once officially San Cristóbal Ecatepec de Morelos, is a city in the State of México and the seat of Ecatepec de Morelos Municipality; however, both the city and the municipality are often known simply as "Ecatepec". The name "Ecatepec" is derived from Nahuatl, and means "windy hill"....
, just outside of Mexico City. The multimillion dollar budget of this museum attracts galleries and museums from around the world. Another important institution is Kurimanzutto, a private gallery in 1999 founded by José Kui and Monica Manzutto which has promoted artists such as Minerva Cuevas
Minerva Cuevas
Minerva Cuevas is a Mexican conceptual artist.She studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. UNAM . She is known for the social and political research that guide her projects usually developed as site-specific interventions. Her production includes installation, video and photographic...
, Daniel Guzmán
Daniel Guzmán
Daniel Guzmán is a retired Mexican professional footballer, who is the former coach of the first division Mexican teams Tigres and Santos.-External links: *...
and Jonathan Hernández. These private galleries and museums have promoted more controversial and political artists which tend to not be shown in state-run institutions. International exposure and private sales has allowed a number of Mexican artists to be independent of the government.
Mexican art reached another peak in the international art scene in the 1990s. Much of this return has been due to existence of biennials, art fairs and international exhibitions outside of Mexico. In 2002 alone, there were more than six major museums around the world which had large scale exhibitions devoted to Mexico. In 2003, Mexico Illustrated was a large scale project by Albright College
Albright College
Albright College is a private, co-ed, liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1856 and is located in Reading, Pennsylvania, United States.-Overview:...
with sixty one artists and a budget of half a million dollars. Much of Mexican’s artists success now is represented by being part of foreign galleries in New York, London and Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
. Despite the increase in interest in Mexican fine art, challenges still remain for Mexican artists hoping to break into the international art market. First, within Mexico art criticism is generally neglected with only one prominent art critic, Cuauhtémoc Medina. With no native writing about art, symbolism and trends, much modern Mexican art shown abroad is mislabeled and/or poorly described as foreign institutions do not sufficiently understand or appreciate the political and social circumstances behind the art. Also, the influences of the muralist period persist. Since much of the art produced since the 1990s is not “obviously Mexican” by the standards of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros, and lacking references to stereotypical cultural references such as pyramids and indigenous people, it is often overlooked. Most modern Mexican artists have an international perspective concerned with a globalized world. Pyramids may appear but they are mixed with images from other cultures such as geishas, yogis and Chinese characters, which come from a recent fascination with Asia. Artist which have produced mostly Asia themed works include Fernanda Brunet, Yushai Jusidman and Pablo Vargas Lugo. Japanese comics and cartoons are a significant of this fascination which can include Hello Kitty
Hello Kitty
is a fictional character produced by the Japanese company Sanrio, first designed by Yuko Shimizu. She is portrayed as a female white Japanese bobtail cat with a red bow. The character's first appearance on an item, a vinyl coin purse, was introduced in Japan in 1974 and brought to the United States...
and My Melody
Onegai My Melody
is an Japanese anime series based on the Sanrio character, My Melody. Produced by Studio Comet, it ran 3 April 2005 to 26 March 2006 on Animax, TV Osaka and TV Tokyo, spanning 52 episodes. A sequel, Onegai My Melody ~Kuru Kuru Shuffle!~, ran 2 April 2006 to 23 March 2007. With its next sequel,...
.
Mexican folk art and handcrafts
Mexican handcrafts and folk artMexican handcrafts and folk art
Mexican handcrafts and folk art is a complex collection of items made with various materials and intended for utilitarian, decorative or other purposes. Some of the items produced by hand in this country include ceramics, wall hangings, vases, furniture, textiles and much more...
, called “artesanía” in Mexico, is a complex category of items, made by hand or in small workshops intended for utilitarian, decorative or other purposes. These include ceramics, wall hangings, certain types of paintings, textiles and more. Like the more formal arts, artesanía has both indigenous and European roots and is considered to be a valued part of Mexico’s ethnic heritage.
This linking among the arts and cultural identity was most strongly forged by the country’s political, intellectual and artistic elite in the first half of the 20th century, after the Mexican Revolution. Artists such as 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...
, 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....
and Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....
used artesanía as inspiration for a number of their murals and other works. Unlike the fine arts, artesanía is created by common people and often those of indigenous heritage, who learn their craft through formal or informal apprenticeship. The linking of artesanía and Mexican identity continues often through television and movies in the country, as well as tourism promotion.
Most of the artesanía produced in Mexico is ordinary things made for daily use, but they are still considered artistic because most contain decorative details and/or are painted in bright colors for aesthetic purposes. The bold use of colors in crafts and other constructions extends back into pre-Hispanic times. These would be joined by other colors introduced by European and Asian contact, but always in bold tones. Design motifs can vary from purely indigenous to mostly European with some other elements thrown in. Geometric designs are prevalent and the most directly connected to Mexico’s pre-Hispanic past and/or items made by the country’s remaining purely indigenous communities. Motifs from nature are as popular, if not more so, than geometric patterns in both pre-Hispanic and European-influenced designs. They are especially prevalent in wall-hangings and ceramics.
One of the best of Mexico’s handcrafts is Talavera pottery
Talavera (pottery)
Talavera pottery of Puebla, Mexico is a type of majolica pottery, which is distinguished by a milky-white glaze. Authentic Talavera pottery only comes from the city of Puebla and the nearby communities of Atlixco, Cholula, and Tecali, because of the quality of the natural clay found there and the...
produced in Puebla
Puebla
Puebla officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Puebla is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 217 municipalities and its capital city is Puebla....
. It has a mix of Chinese, Arab, Spanish and indigenous design influences. The best known folk painting is called the “ex-voto” or “retablo” votive paintings
Votive paintings of Mexico
Votive paintings in Mexico go by several names in Spanish such as “ex voto,” “retablo” or “lamina,” which refer to their purpose, place often found, or material from which they are traditionally made respectively. The painting of religious images to give thanks for a miracle or favored received in...
. This is a small commemorative painting or other artwork created by a believer honoring the intervention of a saint or other figure. The untrained style of ex-voto painting had been appropriated at mid-century by Kahlo, who believed they were the most authentic expression of Latin American art.
Cinema
Cinematography came to Mexico during the Mexican RevolutionMexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...
from France. It was initially used to document some of the battles of this war.The first sound film in Mexico was made in 1931 and called Desde Santa.The first Mexican film genre appeared between 1920 and 1940 called “ranchero.”
While Mexico’s Golden Age of Cinema is considered to be the 1940s and 1950s, two films from the mid to late 1930s, Allá en el Rancho Grande (1936) and Vamanos con Pancho Villa (1935), set the standard of this age thematically, aesthetically and ideologically. These films featured archetypal star figures and symbols based on broad national mythologies. Some of the mythology, according to Carlos Monsiváis
Carlos Monsiváis
Carlos Monsiváis Aceves was a Mexican writer, critic, political activist, and journalist. of French decent He also wrote political opinion columns in leading newspapers and was considered to be an opinion leader within the country's progressive sectors. His generation of writers includes Elena...
, includes the participants in family melodramas, the masculine charro
Charro
Charro is a term referring to a traditional horseman from Mexico, originating in the central-western regions primarily in the state of Jalisco including: Zacatecas, Durango, Guanajuato, Morelos, Puebla...
s of ranchero films, femme fatals (often played by María Félix
María Félix
María Félix was a Mexican film actress and one of the icons of the golden era of the Cinema of Mexico and also one of the myths of the Spanish language Cinema for her life style and personality...
and Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río was a Mexican film actress. She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood...
) and the indigenous peoples of Emilio Fernández
Emilio Fernández
Emilio "El Indio" Fernández was an actor, screenwriter and director of the cinema of Mexico. He is best known for his work as director of the film Maria Candelaria which won the Grand Prix at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.-Early life:Fernández was born in Mineral del Hondo, Coahuila...
’s films, and Cantinflas
Cantinflas
Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes , was a Mexican comic film actor, producer, and screenwriter known professionally as Cantinflas. He often portrayed impoverished campesinos or a peasant of pelado origin...
’s peladito (urban miscreant). Settings were often ranches, the battlefields of the Revolution and cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
s. Movies about the Mexican Revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...
focused on the initial overthrow of the Porfirio Díaz
Porfirio Díaz
José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori was a Mexican-American War volunteer and French intervention hero, an accomplished general and the President of Mexico continuously from 1876 to 1911, with the exception of a brief term in 1876 when he left Juan N...
regime rather than the fighting amongst the various factions afterwards. They also tended to focus on rural themes as Mexican, even though the population was increasingly urban.
Mexico had two main advantages in filmmaking during this time period. The first was a generation of talented actors and filmmakers. These included actors such as María Félix
María Félix
María Félix was a Mexican film actress and one of the icons of the golden era of the Cinema of Mexico and also one of the myths of the Spanish language Cinema for her life style and personality...
, Jorge Negrete
Jorge Negrete
Jorge Alberto Negrete Moreno is considered one of the most popular Mexican singers and actors of all time....
, Pedro Armendáriz
Pedro Armendáriz
Pedro Armendáriz was a Mexican actor of the cinema of Mexico and Hollywood.-Early life:Born Pedro Gregorio Armendáriz Hastings in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico to Pedro Armendáriz García-Conde and Adela Hastings . He was also the cousin of actress Gloria Marín...
, Pedro Infante
Pedro Infante
José Pedro Infante Cruz , better known as Pedro Infante, is the most famous actor and singer of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema and is an idol of the Latinamerican people, together with Jorge Negrete and Javier Solís, who were styled the Tres Gallos Mexicanos . He was born in Mazatlán, Sinaloa,...
, Cantinflas
Cantinflas
Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes , was a Mexican comic film actor, producer, and screenwriter known professionally as Cantinflas. He often portrayed impoverished campesinos or a peasant of pelado origin...
and directors such as Emilio “El Indio” Fernandez
Emilio Fernández
Emilio "El Indio" Fernández was an actor, screenwriter and director of the cinema of Mexico. He is best known for his work as director of the film Maria Candelaria which won the Grand Prix at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.-Early life:Fernández was born in Mineral del Hondo, Coahuila...
and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa
Gabriel Figueroa
Gabriel Figueroa Mateos was a Mexican cinematographer who worked both in Mexican cinema and Hollywood....
. Many of these same starts also had success in the United States and at the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
. On the corner of La Brea and Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood Boulevard
-Revitalization:In recent years successful efforts have been made at cleaning up Hollywood Blvd., as the street had gained a reputation for crime and seediness. Central to these efforts was the construction of the Hollywood and Highland shopping center and adjacent Kodak Theatre in 2001...
, there is a sculpture of four women that represent the four pillars of the cinema industry with one of these represented by Mexican actress Dolores del Rio
Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río was a Mexican film actress. She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood...
. Gabriel Figueroa is known for his black and white camerawork which is generally stark and expressionist, with simple but sophisticated camera movement. One other advantage in the 1940s for Mexico was that it was not heavily involved in the Second World War and therefore, had a greater supply of celluloid for films, then also used for bombs.
In the 1930s, the government became interested in the industry in order to promote certain cultural and political values. Much of the production during the Golden Age was a mix of public and private financing with the government eventually taking a larger role. In 1942, the Banco Cinematográfico would finance almost all of the industry, and this came under government control by 1947. This gave the government extensive censorship rights through deciding which projects it would finance. While the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) censored films in many ways in the 1940s and 1950s, it was not as repressive as other Spanish speaking countries, but it played a strong role in how Mexico’s government and culture was portrayed.
The Golden Age ended in the late fifties, with the 1960s dominated by often poorly made imitations of Hollywood westerns and comedies. These films were increasingly shot outdoors and popular films featured stars from lucha libre
Lucha libre
Lucha libre is a term used in Mexico, and other Spanish-speaking countries, for a form of professional wrestling that has developed within those countries...
. However, art and experimental film production in Mexico has its roots in this same time period, which would begin to bear fruit in the 1970s. Director Paul Leduc surfaced in the 1970s specializing in films without dialogue. He first major success was with Reed:Insurgent Mexico (1971) followed by a biography of Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....
called Frida (1984). He is the most consistently political of modern Mexican directors. In the 1990s, he filmed Latino Bar (1991) and Dollar Mambo (1993). However, his silent films generally have not had commercial success. In the late 20th century, the main proponent of Mexican art cinema was Arturo Ripstein Jr. whose career began with a spaghetti Western like film called Tiempo de morir in 1965 and is considered to be the successor to Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
, who had worked in Mexico in the 1940s. Some of his classic films include El Castillo de la pureza (1973), Lugar sin limites (1977) and La reina de la noche (1994) exploring topics such as family ties and even homosexuality, dealing in cruelty, irony and tragedy.
State censorship was relatively lax in the 1960s and early 1970s, but came back during the latter 1970s and 1980s, monopolizing production and distribution. Anther factor was that many Mexican film making facilities were taken over by Hollywood productions in the 1980s, crowding out local production. The quality of films diminished enough that for some of these years, Mexico’s Ariel film award
Ariel Award
The Ariel is the Mexican Academy of Film Award. It has been awarded annually since 1947. The award recognizes excellence in motion picture making, such as acting, directing and screenwriting in Mexican cinema. It is considered the most prestigious award in the Mexican movie industry.- History :The...
was suspended for lack of qualifying candidates. Popular film making decreased but the art sector actually grew, sometimes producing works outside the view of censors such as Jorge Fons
Jorge Fons
Jorge Fons Pérez is a Mexican film director.He belongs to the first generation of film directors of the UNAM. His short film, Caridad , is still considered one of the best films in Mexican cinema...
’ 1989 film Rojo amanecer on the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre
Tlatelolco massacre
The Tlatelolco massacre, also known as The Night of Tlatelolco , was a government massacre of student and civilian protesters and bystanders that took place during the afternoon and night of October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City...
. The movie was banned by the government but history was changing and Fons received support with Mexico and abroad. The film was shown although not too widely. However, it was the beginning of more editorial freedom for filmmakers in Mexico.
Starting in the 1990s, Mexican cinema began to make a comeback, mostly through co production with foreign interests. Many films have been with urban and everyday themes. However, one main reason for current international interest in Mexican cinema was the wild success of Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate)
Like Water for Chocolate (film)
Like Water for Chocolate is a 1992 film based on the popular novel, published in 1989 by first-time Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel. It earned all 11 Ariel awards of the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures, including the Ariel Award for Best Picture, and became the highest grossing Spanish-language...
. In 1993, this film was the largest grossing foreign language film in U.S. history and runs in a total of 34 countries. Since then, Mexican film as divided into two genres. Those for a more domestic audience tend to be more personal and more ambiguously political such as Pueblo de Madera, La vida conjugal, and Angel de fuego. Those geared for international audiences have more stereotypical Mexican images and include Solo con tu pareja, La invencion de cronos along with Como agua para chocolate.
Mexico’s newest generation of successful directors includes Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican film director.González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the DGA of America for Best Director. He is also the first and only Mexican born director to have won the Prix de la mise en scene...
, Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and designer. He is mostly known for his acclaimed films, Blade II, Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy film franchise. He is a frequent collaborator with Ron Perlman, Federico Luppi and Doug Jones...
and Alfonso Cuarón
Alfonso Cuarón
Alfonso Cuarón Orozco is a Mexican film director, screenwriter and film producer, best known for his films Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Y tu mamá también, and A Little Princess.- Early life :...
. Films include Cuarón/Children of Men
Children of Men
Children of Men is a 2006 science fiction film loosely adapted from P. D. James's 1992 novel The Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. In 2027, two decades of human infertility have left society on the brink of collapse. Illegal immigrants seek sanctuary in England, where the last...
filmed in England and El Laberinto del fauno
Pan's Labyrinth
Pan's Labyrinth is a 2006 Spanish Spanish-language dark fantasy film, written and directed by Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro. It was produced and distributed by the Mexican film company Esperanto Films...
which was a Mexican/Spanish production. Film professionals today tend to be at least bilingual (Spanish/English) and often multicultural better able to participate in the global market for films than their predecessors.
Photography in Mexico
Photography came to Mexico in the form of daguerreotypeDaguerreotype
The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate....
about six months after its discovery, and its use spread quickly. It was initially used for portraits of the wealthy because of its cost, but some landscape and pre Hispanic ruins as well. Another relatively common type of early photographic portrait was those of recently deceased children called “little angels” which persisted into the first half of the 20th century. This custom is derived from a long Catholic tradition of celebrating the dead child’s immediate acceptance into heaven, bypassing purgatory. This photography replaced the practice of making drawings and other depictions of them as this was considered a “happy occasion.” Formal portraits were the most common form of commercial photography through the end of the 19th century.
Modern photography in Mexico did not begin as an art form, but rather as documentation, associated with periodicals and government projects. It dates to the Porfirio Díaz
Porfirio Díaz
José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori was a Mexican-American War volunteer and French intervention hero, an accomplished general and the President of Mexico continuously from 1876 to 1911, with the exception of a brief term in 1876 when he left Juan N...
period of rule or the Porfiriato from the late 19th century to 1910. Porfirian era photography was heavily inclined toward the documentation of the nation’s modernization to the rest of the world, with Mexico City as its cultural showpiece. This image was European based with some indigenous elements for distinction. Stylized images of the indigenous during the Porfirato were principally done by Ybañez y Sora in the costumbrista
Costumbrista
Costumbrismo refers to the literary or pictorial interpretation of local everyday life, mannerisms, and customs, primarily in the Hispanic scene, and particularly in the 19th century...
painting style which was very popular outside of Mexico. However, the most important Porfirian era photographer was Guillermo Kahlo
Guillermo Kahlo
Carl Wilhelm Kahlo was a German photographer and father of artist Frida Kahlo, who painted his portrait....
, who worked with associate Hugo Brehme . Kahlo established his own studio in the first decade of the 1900s and was hired by businesses and the government to document mostly architecture, interiors, landscapes and factories. Kahlo’s style reflected the narratives of the period, solely focusing on major constructions and events, and avoiding the common populace. It also avoided any subjects that hinted at the political instability of the country at the time, such as strikes. One major Kahlo project was the Photographic Inventory of Spanish Colonial Church Architecture in Mexico (1910) which consisted of twenty five albums sponsored by the federal government to document the colonial architecture still standing. Kahlo’s photography was used to link Mexico’s past to its then progress with political and social power provided in symbols and ideals as well to link the government’s aspirations with its colonial and pre Hispanic past.
Agustín Casasola
Agustín Víctor Casasola , others cite: was a Mexican photographer and partial founder of the Mexican Association of Press Photographers....
. Like Kahlo, he began his career in the Porfirato, but his career was focused on photography for periodicals. Again like Kahlo, Casasola’s work prior to the Mexican Revolution focused on non-controversial photographs, focusing on the lives of the elite. However, the outbreak of this civil war caused Casasola’s choice of subject to change. He focused not only on portraits of the main protagonists such as Francisco Villa and general battle scenes, but he also took photographs of executions, the dead and focused on the people involved with faces showing pain, kindness, resignation and more. His work during this time produced a large collection of photographs, many of which are very familiar to Mexicans has they have been widely reprinted and reused, but often without credit to Casasola. After the war, Casasola continued to photograph common people, especially migrants to Mexico City during the 1920s and 1930s. His total known archives has about half a million images with many of his works archived in the former monastery of San Francisco in Pachuca
Pachuca
Pachuca, formally Pachuca de Soto is the capital of the Mexican state of Hidalgo. It is located in the south-central part of the state. Pachuca de Soto is also the name of the municipality of which the city serves as municipal seat...
.
Kahlo and Casasola are considered to be the first two most important photographers to develop the medium in Mexico, with Kahlo defining architectural photography and Casasolas establishing photojournalism. Neither man thought of himself as an artist, especially not Casasolas, who thought of himself as a historian in the Positivist
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
tradition, but the photography of both show attention to detail, lighting, placement os subjects and more for emotional or dramatic effect.
For the rest of the 20th century, most photography would be connected to documentation. However, artistic trends from both inside and outside the country had its effect. In the 1920s, the dominant photographic style was called “pictorialism
Pictorialism
Pictorialism is the name given to a photographic movement in vogue from around 1885 following the widespread introduction of the dry-plate process. It reached its height in the early years of the 20th century, and declined rapidly after 1914 after the widespread emergence of Modernism...
” where images would have a romantic or dream like quality due to the use of filters and other techniques. American Edward Weston
Edward Weston
Edward Henry Weston was a 20th century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his forty-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of...
would break with this tradition, taking these effects away for more realistic and detailed images. This would cause a split in the photography world between pictorialists and realists both inside and outside of Mexico. Weston and his Italian assistant Tina Modotti
Tina Modotti
Tina Modotti was an Italian photographer, model, actress, and revolutionary political activist.- Early life :Modotti was born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini in Udine, Friuli, Italy...
were in Mexico from 1923 to 1926, allying themselves with Mexican realist photographers Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Manuel Álvarez Bravo was a Mexican photographer.Álvarez Bravo was born in Mexico City on February 4, 1902. He came from a family of artists and writers, and met several other prominent artists who encouraged his work when he was young, including Tina Modotti and Diego Rivera...
as well as muralists such as Gabriel Fernández Ledesma
Gabriel Fernández Ledesma
Gabriel Fernández Ledesma was a Mexican painter, printmaker, sculptor, graphic artist, writer and teacher. He has been described as one of the most prolific artists in Mexican modern art.-Biography:...
. These photographers political and social aspirations matched those of the muralist movement and the new post Revolution government. Photography and other arts shifted to depictions of the country’s indigenous heritage and the glorification of the Mexican common people. The main reason for this was to reject the elitist and heavily European values of the Porfiriato along with the increasing cultural influence of the United States in favor of an “authentic” and distinct Mexican identity. Another was the government’s decision to use this imagery, rather than the still-fresh memories of the battles and atrocities of the Revolution to promote itself.
Manuel Alvarez Bravo experimented with abstraction in his photography and then formed his own personal style, concerned with Mexican rites and customs. He was active from the 1920s until his death in the 1990s. Like other artists of the 20th century, he was concerned with balancing international artistic trends with the expression of Mexican culture and people. His photographic techniques were concerned with transforming the ordinary into the fantastic. From the end of the 1930s to the 1970s his photography developed with the same themes to new technologies such as color. In the 1970s, he experimented with female nudes.
These post Revolution photographers would influence the generations after them, but the emphasis would remain on documentary journalism, especially for newspapers. For this reason, the focus would remain on social issues. This included work by Nacho López and Hector Garcia, best known for their photography of the student uprising of 1968
Tlatelolco massacre
The Tlatelolco massacre, also known as The Night of Tlatelolco , was a government massacre of student and civilian protesters and bystanders that took place during the afternoon and night of October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City...
.
During the 1970s, there was a fusion of various styles with still a marked social focus. During the same time period, a number of institutions dedicated to the promotion of photography and conservation of photographs, such as the Centro de la Imagen, the Fototeca Nacional del INAH and the publication Luna Córnea, were established.
Contemporary photography in Mexico still remains mostly focused on photojournalism and other kinds of documentary. Francisco Mata de Rosas is considered to be the most notable photographer in contemporary Mexico mostly working with documentaries. He has published a number of books including México Tenochtitlan and Tepito, bravo el barrio. Eniac Martínez specializes in panoramics. Patricia Aridjis works with social themes mostly to illustrate books. Gerardo Montiel Klint’s work has been describing a “shadowing and dark world”, focusing on the angst and violence of adolescents. The most recent generation of photographers work with new and digital technologies. One of these is Javier Orozco
Javier Orozco
Javier Antonio Orozco Peñuelas is a Mexican professional footballer. He was brought up by and currently plays as a striker in Cruz Azul...
who specializes in interiors.
However, there is purely artistic photography done in the country which has had impact.I n 2002, a scandalous photographic exhibit featured images of young, blonde women, Mexican multimillionaires or wives of the super rich done by photographer Daniela Rossell. While the women are heavily made up and in sexy poses, most of the controversy related to the ostentatious condition of their homes, filled with expensive paintings, hunting trophies, crystal chandeliers, gold lame
Lame
Lame may refer to:* Lameness , lameness in horses* LAME, MP3 encoder* "Lame" , song by Unwritten Law* Licensed aircraft maintenance engineer...
wallpaper and household help. The photographs set off a wave of social criticism as well as tabloid gossip.