Latin American painting
luis lopez
Spanish and Portuguese colonists in South America, Central America,
and Mexico. The blend of European and indigenous (native) American
cultures that characterizes Latin America today began to develop in
the late 15th century. The Latin American artistic tradition was
founded upon ancient, highly developed pre-Columbian civilizations,
most notably those of the Aztec and Maya in Mexico and the Inca in
Peru (see Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761555103>).
The Native American artistic traditions that European colonists
encountered dated back centuries. Native painting traditions included
manuscript illuminations; brilliantly colored, large-scale murals that
decorated temples and illustrated historical events and ceremonies;
and works of art in exotic media such as iridescent feathers. The
strength of these traditions, along with the patronage of indigenous
rulers and the numerical superiority of native peoples, ensured that
colonial painting-at least initially-did not reflect European models
alone but rather represented a mixture of European and indigenous
artistic values. However, after about 1600, as the continued arrival
of new settlers expanded the European presence, artistic styles
increasingly reflected European models, especially in the urban
centers.
The overall structure of colonial art history is remarkably similar
throughout Latin America, despite the enormous geographic area and the
diverse traditions it encompasses. Most regions experienced similar
stages from early colonial art to modern art, although the timetable
varied greatly with location; some areas became colonized too late to
experience the full sequence of stages. In addition Brazil, because it
formed part of the vast Portuguese empire that extended to Africa and
the Indian subcontinent, departed from the Hispanic pattern in many
respects. Because the Portuguese imported large numbers of Africans to
supplement native labor in Brazil, Brazilian culture became a blend of
the cultures of three continents: Africa, South America, and Europe.
Uniting all Latin American art from about 1580 was a tendency to
revive the late Renaissance style of Mannerism
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761551767>, largely because it was the
dominant style in Europe when European traditions became established
in the Americas. From about 1630 on, the baroque
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761572212> style was dominant, although
elements of Mannerism remained until the early 19th century.
Modern Art
In the first two decades of the 20th century, Spanish modernists
introduced Latin American painters to European styles of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, including impressionism
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761553672>, postimpressionism
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761558702>, symbolism
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761555417>, and art nouveau
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761569730>. Mexican painter Saturnino
Herrán, for example, used symbolism in his mural project, Our Gods
(1904-1918, National Theater, Mexico City), in which nobly posed
native Mexicans serve as powerful symbols of Mexican identity.
Herran's mural project became a model for the many large-scale public
murals that were commissioned in the 1920s.
Modern art in Latin America found its own voice in these public murals
created in the wake of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). Defining
this movement were three Mexican muralists-Diego Rivera
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761566910>, José Clemente Orozco
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761571690>, and David Alfaro Siqueiros
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761556942>-along with architect and
muralist Juan O'Gorman </find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761587587> and
landscape painter Gerardo Murillo (known as Dr. Atl). Rivera in
particular developed under the influences of European modernism,
studying in Spain and in Paris, France, from 1907 to 1921 and working
with Spanish artists Pablo Picasso
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761569324> and Juan Gris
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761562246>, who were experimenting with
cubism </find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761551811>. Cubist techniques
such as the use of a diagonal grid as the basis of large-scale
organization, abound in the works of Rivera and the other Mexican
muralists.
The muralists expressed solidarity with the working and farming
classes and shared the obsession with non-European aspects of Latin
American culture that characterized the indigenism movement. These
interests also inspired a simultaneous movement in photography and the
graphic arts toward social realism, or the depiction of common people
in a politically charged context. Rivera drew on both pre-Columbian
sources and the traditions of Mexican folk art in a series of murals
for the National Palace in Mexico City (1930-1932) that depict
Mexico's history starting before European colonization. Siqueiros and
Orozco also painted emotionally charged murals for public buildings,
expressing their sympathy with workers and their opposition to
political oppression in portrayals of Mexican history. Rivera, Orozco,
and Siqueiros worked in the United States as well, where they
exercised a strong influence on public art projects of the 1930s and
1940s, as well as on the early work of American abstract expressionist
artists such as Jackson Pollock
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761563814>.
In much of Latin American modern art, indigenism, social realism, and
the stylistic aspects of the mural movement joined with an interest in
surrealism </find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761554397>. Surrealism, a
movement in literature and the arts, emphasized the role of dreams and
the unconscious </find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761568959> in the
creative process. To this, the Latin Americans added an interest in
archetypes-images, ideas, or patterns that have come to be considered
universal models. These archetypes, which appear in mythology,
religion, and art, make up what Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung
</find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761578837> and others termed the
collective unconscious. Archetypes, especially those found in Native
American art, have continued to fascinate Latin American painters of
the 20th century.
"Latin American Painting," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia
2001
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