Latin American art is the combined artistic expression of South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico, 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, highly influenced by religious and spiritual concerns, and their work is collectively known as Pre-columbian art. The blending of Native American, African and European cultures has resulted in a unique mestizo tradition.
Read more about Latin American Art: Colonial Period, Modernism, Constructivist Movement, Muralism, Generación De La Ruptura, Surrealism
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“Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn’t. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.”
—Bill Cosby (b. 1937)
“Artists are never complete people. But if it’s art that completes them, then what is taken away?”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)