Latin American art is the combined artistic expression of Mexico, Central America, Caribbean, and South America, as well as Latin Americans living in other regions.
The art has roots in the many different indigenous cultures that inhabited the Americas before European colonization in the 16th century. The indigenous cultures each developed sophisticated artistic disciplines, which were highly influenced by religious and spiritual concerns. Their work is collectively known and referred to as Pre-Columbian art. The blending of Amerindian, European and African cultures has resulted in a unique Mestizo tradition.
Colonial period
During the colonial period, a mixture of indigenous traditions and European influences (mainly due to the Christian teachings of Franciscan, Augustinian and Dominican friars) produced a very particular Christian art known as Indochristian art. In addition to indigenous art, the development of Latin American visual art was significantly influenced by Spanish, Portuguese, and French and Dutch Baroque painting. In turn Baroque painting was often influenced by the Italian masters.
The Cuzco School is viewed as the first center of European-style painting in the Americas. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Spanish art instructors taught Quechua artists to paint religious imagery based on classical and Renaissance styles.The "Cusquenha" Art. Museu Histórico Nacional. (retrieved 30 April 2009)
In eighteenth-century New Spain, Mexican artists along with a few Spanish artists produced paintings of a system of racial hierarchy, known as casta paintings. It was almost exclusively a Mexican form however, one set was produced in Peru. In a break from religious paintings of the preceding centuries, casta paintings were a secular art form. Only one known casta painting by a relatively unknown painter, Luis de Mena, combines castas with Mexico's Virgin of Guadalupe; this being an exception. Some of Mexico's most distinguished artists painted casta works, including Miguel Cabrera. Most casta paintings were on multiple canvases, with one family grouping on each. There were a handful of single canvas paintings, showing the entire racial hierarchy. The paintings show idealized family groupings, with the father being of one racial, the mother of another racial category, and their offspring being a third racial category. This genre of painting flourished for about a century, coming to an end with Mexican independence in 1821, and the abolition of legal racial categories.Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting, New Haven: Yale University Press 2005.
In the seventeenth century, The Netherlands had captured the rich sugar-producing area of the Portuguese colony of Brazil (1630–1654). During that period, Dutch artist Albert Eckhout painted a number of important depictions of social types in Brazil. These depictions included images of indigenous men and women, as well as still lifes.Dawn Ades, "Nature, Science, and the Picturesque" in Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820–1980, London: South Bank Center 1989, 64–65.
Scientific expeditions approved by the Spanish crown began exploring Spanish America where its flora and fauna were recorded. Spaniard José Celestino Mutis, a medical doctor and horticulturalist and follower of Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, led an expedition starting in 1784 to northern South America, the expedition is known as the Expedición Botánica de Nueva Granada. Local artists were Ecuadorean Indians, who produced five thousand color drawings of nature, all being published. The crown chartered expedition whose purpose was scientific recording of the natural beauty and wealth of Nature, was a departure from the long traditional religious art.Stanton L. Catlin, "Traveller-Reporter Artists and the Empirical tradition in Post Independence Latin American Art" in Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820-1980, London: South Bank Center 1989, pp. 43-45, color plate 3.2 p. 44.
The most important scientific expedition was that of Alexander von Humboldt and French botanist Aimé Bonpland. They traveled for five years throughout Spanish America (1799-1804), exploring and recording scientific information as well as the attire and lifestyles local populations.Alexander von Humboldt, Voyage de Humboldt et de Bonpland, Première Partie; Relation Historique: Atlas Pittoresque: 'Vues de Cordillères et monuments de peuples indigènes de l'Amérique', Paris 1810. Humboldt's work became an inspiration and template for continuing scientific work in the nineteenth century, as well as traveller reporters who recorded the scenes of everyday life.
In 1818, the Academy of San Alejandro in Havana, Cuba, was founded by Alejandro Ramírez, and the French painter Jean Baptiste Vermay, served as the founding director. It is the oldest academy of art in Latin America.
Historiography of colonial art and architecture The history of Latin American art has generally been written by those with training in art history departments. However, the concept of "visual culture" has now brought scholars trained in other disciplines to write the histories of art. It became more prevalent through the later 1900's. As with the history of indigenous peoples, for many years there was a focus on either the pre-Columbian period (Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Inca) art production, then a leap to the twentieth century. More recently, the colonial era and the nineteenth century have developed as fields of focus. Visual culture as a field increasingly crosses disciplinary boundaries. Colonial architecture has been the subject of a number of important studies.George Kubler, Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press 1948.John McAndrew, The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-Century Mexico: Atrios, Posas, Open Chapels, and Other Studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1965.James Early, The Colonial Architecture of Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1994.James Early, Presidio, Mission, and Pueblo: Spanish Architecture and Urbanism in the United States. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press 2004.Valerie Fraser. The Architecture of Conquest: Building in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1535–1635. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989.Harold Wethey, Colonial Architecture and Sculpture in Peru. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1949.
Colonial art has a long tradition, especially in Mexico, with there being publications of Manuel Toussaint.Manuel Toussaint, Arte colonial en México. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1948. 5th edition 1990. In recent years, there has been a boom in publications on colonial art, with some useful overviews being published in recent years.Damian Bayon and Murrillo Marx, History of South American Colonial Art and Architecture. New York: Rizzoli 1989.Marcus Burke, Treasures of Mexican Colonial Painting. Davenport IA: The Davenport Museum of Art 1998.Richard Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493–1793. New Haven: Yale University Press 2000.Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Art of Colonial Latin America. London: Phaidon 2005Kelly Donahue-Wallace, Art and Architecture of Viceregal Latin America, 1521–1821. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 2008.Emily Umbeger and Tom Cummins, eds.Native Artists and Patrons in Colonial Spanish America. Phoebus: A Journal of Art History. Phoenix: Arizona State University 1995. Many works deal exclusively with Spanish America.
Major exhibitions on colonial art have resulted in fine catalogs as a permanent record.Linda Bantel and Marcus Burke, Spain and New Spain: Mexican Colonial Arts in their European Context. Exhibition catalog. Corpus Christi TX: Art Museum of South Texas 1979.María Concepción García Sáiz, Las castas mexicanas: Un género pictórico americano. Milan: Olivetti 1989.New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America. Exhibition catalog. New York: Americas Society Art Gallery 1996.Diana Fane, ed. Converging Cultures: Art and Identity in Spanish America. Exhibition catalog. New York: The Brooklyn Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams. 1996.Los Siglos de oro en los Virreinatos de América 1550–1700. Exhibition catalog. Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, 1999.Donna Pierce et al., Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life 1521–1821. Exhibition catalog. Denver: Denver Art Museum 2004.The Arts in Latin America: 1492–1820. Exhibition catalog. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art 2006.
Gallery
Nineteenth-century
During the 19th Century, parallel to the formation of the first Nation State in Central America and South America, art assumed a political and social role. Far from being a mere aesthetic element, the latin-american artistic production worked like a reflection of its time, mirroring the structural organization of these new societies, and also building and collaborating with the perpetuation of its new subjects through visual representations.
In the first decades, there was a strong presence throughout the continent in which art get’s pulled close to the iconography. In such context, it’s understood that paintings as a iconographic kind of artistic production that works like a visual language that tries to comprehend the meaning of symbols, metaphors and narrative elements, be it explicit or implicit in an artwork, focusing on the analysis of what is being represented and its reasons.
Throughout the period, it has been observed that artistic sources transcended the realm of mere visual registry, assuming the role of a political, social, ethnic and economical construction of the society. The representative power of Latin American art from this period can be delimited by dividing it into two characteristics: the representation of power among individuals within the social sphere, and the paintings representing historical moments singled out as forming the nation.
Historical and Academicist Painting At the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century, the concepts of nationality and belonging gained centrality in Enlightenment intellectual debates. With the advance of emancipatory sentiments, the subsequent waves of independence, especially in the Americas, and the separatist movements, the need arose to build a collective identity. This effort aimed to enable citizens to recognize themselves as part of a broad social body that would come to demand commitment, loyalty and responsibility from them: the Nation.
To perpetuate this image of unity, States employed various apparatuses as political artifices. Among them, historical painting played a fundamental role in creating a common past that served, among other purposes, as a model of moral correction for citizens. These works recovered past episodes, usually led by mythical figures, portrayed in real or allegorical form to consolidate a mythological narrative of national aggrandizement. Nationalism is often seen being rescued by historical painting artists to pave the implicit discourse conveyed by the works.
Throughout 19th-century Latin America, one perceives the strength of this artistic genre in the fortification of the young nations that were emancipating themselves from their Metropoles. By way of example, the Chilean painter Manuel Antonio Caro recorded the moment of the Abdication of Bernardo O’Higgins which took place on 28 January 1823, when the Supreme Leader of Chile resigned from power to avoid civil war in the country. Pressured by the aristocracy and by uprisings in the provinces, he handed over the office to a Government Junta. The work, conceived over half a century after the event, aims to illustrate a historical passage deemed important for the national memory of Chile.