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The Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) is the foremost collection of geometric abstract art from Latin America. From the 1930s through the 1970s distinct artistic movements emerged in the cities of Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Caracas that explored innovative forms of expression reflecting the new optimism sweeping the continent. This volume explores the ways in which the artists of these cities heralded the promise of a bright, modern future by creating a co...

The stark reality of all life, from the biology of the food chain incorporating all living beings to the social stratification and hierarchies of human cultures, revolves around violence -- physical or psychological. That unavoidable, black-and-white, worldview of survival of the fittest with little if any grey to mitigate it is coloured only by the red lifeblood of the victims of the bigger, the stronger, the smarter, the wilier, who literally and/or figuratively eat their victims -- overcomin...

Three hundred years ago San Antonio was founded as a strategic outpost of presidios and missions on the edge of northern New Spain, imposing Spanish political and religious principles on this contested, often hostile region. The city's many Catholic missions bear architectural witness to the time of their founding, but few have walked these sites without wondering who once lived there and what they saw, valued, and thought. San Antonio 1718 presents a wealth of art that depicts a rich blending...

Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1950, sculptor Luis Tapia is a pioneering Chicano artist who for forty-five years has pushed the art of polychrome wood sculpture to new levels of craftsmanship and social and political commentary. Tapia's works speak to the complexity of Latino/Hispano/Chicano identity, history, and contemporary culture, offering compelling insights and challenging perspectives on life in the barrio, on the border, and beyond. Rooted in a folk art tradition established in sevent...

The Royal Chicano Air Force produced major works of visual art, poetry, prose, music, and performance during the second half of the twentieth century and first decades of the twenty-first. Materializing in Sacramento, California, in 1969 and established between 1970 and 1972, the RCAF helped redefine the meaning of artistic production and artwork to include community engagement projects such as breakfast programs, community art classes, and political and labor activism. The collective’s work has...

Art produced outside hegemonic centers is often seen as a form of derivation or relegated to a provisional status. Forming Abstraction turns this narrative on its head. In the first book-length study of postwar Brazilian art and culture, Adele Nelson highlights the importance of exhibitionary and pedagogical institutions in the development of abstract art in Brazil. By focusing on the formation of the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1951; the early activities of artists Geraldo de Barros, Lygia Clark, Wal...

Contemporary Art in Latin America, is a bold and rousing exploration of the most significant art being created by Latin American's today. Emerging from complex cultural roots, Latin American art is extraordinarily diverse and original. This book covers a variety of contemporary art methods, looking at photography, installation art, sculpture, painting, textiles, and examines the styles, current perceptions and culture of this region. Contemporary Art in Latin America is an engaging, challenging...

From its inception in the 1960s to its present form, contemporary Mexican American or Chicano art has developed as an art of identity, asserting the uniqueness of Chicanos and their dual Mexican and U.S. American cultural backgrounds. Because it emerged as a social phenomenon, however, many people outside the Chicano community have perceived Chicano art as merely protest art or social commentary, and Mexican American artists have been largely ignored in mainstream museums and absent in art histo...