Latin American Art: Primary & Biographical Sources

First publication of the remarkable repainting of this outstanding Mexican codex -- the priceless original is in Vatican Library. It is thought to have originated in the Cholula area, (ca. AD 1400).
76 full-color plates show an astounding array of gods, kings, warriors, mythical creatures, and abstract designs. A work of rare power and beauty.

In the aftermath of the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of Mexico, Spanish friars and authorities partnered with indigenous rulers and savants to gather detailed information on Aztec history, religious beliefs, and culture. The pictorial books they created served the Spanish as aids to evangelization and governance, but their content came from the native intellectuals, painters, and writers who helped to create them. Examining the nine major surviving texts, Boone explores how indigenous artists and writers documented their ancestral culture. Analyzing the texts as one distinct corpus, Boone shows how they combined European and indigenous traditions of documentation and considers questions of motive, authorship, and audience. For Spanish authorities, she shows, the books revealed Aztec ideology and practice, while for the indigenous community, they preserved venerated ways of pictorial expression as well as rhetorical and linguistic features of ancient discourses.

A comprehensive overview of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American philosophers, politicians, activists, entertainers, scholars, poets, scientists, religious figures, kings, and everyday people whose lives have contributed to the history of the Caribbean and Latin America. Unprecedented in scale, it covers the entire Caribbean and the Afro-descended populations throughout Latin America, including people who spoke and wrote Creole, Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. Coverage begins with the first forced slave migrations in the 16th century to contemporary figures.

This is a comprehensive reference book to more than 12,700 painters, sculptors, graphic artists and architects in Latin America (Mexico, Central America, South America) and the Caribbean region active during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Entries include the artists' years, countries and bibliographies. Also included are brief biographical information, stylistic notes, a record of each artist's exhibitions and a list of collections where his or her works can be seen. There are 89 photographs of selected works that supplement the entries. The introduction includes brief informative background essays on the individual countries and their artists.