Latin American Sculpture

I

Introduction

Latin American Sculpture, sculpture produced in South America, Central America, and Mexico after the arrival of Spanish and Portuguese colonists in the early 16th century. (To learn about other artistic developments in Latin America, see Latin American Painting; Latin American Architecture.)

Until the 20th century, Latin American sculpture comprised three main types. Stone sculpture was used primarily to decorate the exterior of churches and other important buildings. Carved wooden sculpture, often painted and gilded, was generally used to decorate church interiors. The third type, called retablos or altar ensembles, included architectural elements, carved relief sculpture, paintings, and other decorations around church altars. In addition, ceremonial religious objects, usually crafted from precious metals, fell somewhere in between sculpture and the decorative arts. Not until the 20th century did artists create significant sculpture that did not serve a religious function.

Colonial sculpture built on a strong base of indigenous (native) American traditions, especially on a Mexican tradition of outdoor sculpture. Monumental stone sculpture had enjoyed 2000 years of development in Mexico before the arrival of Spanish colonists in 1519 (see Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture).

II

Early Development

Among the early European settlers of Latin America were Roman Catholic clergy, who came to convert the Native American population to the Christian religion. By necessity, religious leaders initially relied on indigenous artists to decorate the many new missions and churches that were built. Government officials similarly relied on native labor to build and decorate government buildings. To provide European models for these artists, the colonists imported European prints, statues, crosses, and other objects of worship. As a result, 16th-century sculpture in Latin America typically mixed European and indigenous elements into an artistic hybrid known as mestizo art (a Spanish word also applied to people of mixed European and Native American ancestry). In Mexico this cultural mixture appeared in 16th-century courtyard crosses, baptismal fonts, and other stone objects, and is usually referred to as Indochristian art.

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By the middle of the 16th century the European population in Latin America had significantly increased, and European sculptors began setting up workshops to compete with indigenous artists. Bernardo Bitti, an Italian Jesuit painter and sculptor, established a workshop in Peru in the late 16th century. In Mexico, immigrant sculptors and carpenters formed a guild in 1568, and although the guild did not exclude artists on the basis of race, it did enforce European artistic values such as an emphasis on realism, Renaissance idealism, and the use of Christian imagery.

By the 17th century, European styles dominated sculpture—even the work of mestizo artists—in such centers of colonial power as Mexico City and Puebla, Mexico, and Lima, Peru. Mestizo styles generally moved to the periphery, where they survived as folk art, although indigenous leaders and mestizo patrons continued to encourage mestizo art in some regions, especially in Pátzcuaro Michoacán, Mexico; Cuzco, Peru; and the booming mining area of Potosí, Bolivia.

III

Wooden Sculpture

Most carved wooden sculpture was created as part of altar ensembles for church interiors. Much of it was polychrome (multicolored) and in some cases decorated with gold leaf. The painted pieces exhibit an especially close relationship with the art of Spain and Portugal. Works produced at the centers of colonial power, such as Mexico City and Lima, are hardly distinguishable from the European originals they imitated. In 17th-century Peru, the availability of imported works by Spanish sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés enabled his many followers in Latin America to study his work firsthand. Montañés’s painted sculptures of Christian saints combine powerful realism with a feeling of controlled dignity.

A sculptor’s skills could be seen to greater advantage in the unpainted wood carvings commissioned to decorate the choir areas of large churches and cathedrals. Spanish-born Peruvian sculptor Pedro de Noguera was asked in 1623 to design choir stalls for the Cathedral of Lima. The Lima choir stalls feature an enormous, elaborately carved architectural framework with dynamic, realistic figures carved in high relief behind each wooden seat. Other important schools of carving developed in Guatemala, where ivory carvings brought by trade ships from Manila, the Philippines, influenced local sculpture, and in the Spanish colony of New Granada (now Ecuador and Colombia), where the super-realistic style of southern Spain was tempered by a graceful delicacy.

Art historians have not yet identified the sculptors of many early Latin American works. One work that remains anonymous, a painted wooden image of Fray Felipe de Jesús (about 1650) in the Cathedral of Mexico in Mexico City, presents the saint striding forward, his face locked in a tragic expression. Its combination of opposites—realism with a formal composition, dynamism with arrested motion—places this work among the most important pieces of 17th-century Mexican sculpture. Other 17th-century masters, including Tomás Xuárez and his son, Salvador de Ocampo, are better known to scholars. Ocampo’s choir stalls (now at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria) for the former church of San Agustín in Mexico City combine exuberant baroque decoration with precisely carved reliefs depicting biblical scenes. Although they worked in a European style, Xuárez and Ocampo were of native origin. The fact that they were entrusted with large-scale, and therefore expensive, projects provides evidence of the degree of racial integration in the Spanish colonies.

The 18th-century Peruvian Melchor Huamán of Cuzco developed a realistic three-dimensional version of the hypnotic images found in local paintings. Manuel Chil Caspicara of Quito, Ecuador, extended the exquisitely delicate New Granada style to multiple figures in his Assumption of the Virgin (mid- to late-1700s, Church of San Francisco, Quito). Other notable sculptors of the 18th century include Peruvian Baltazar Gavilán and Ecuadorian Bernardo de Legarda.

IV

Religious Objects

Artisans created splendidly crafted religious objects in silver and gold for the newly built churches and cathedrals of Latin America. These objects included candlesticks, processional crosses, cups, plates, and monstrances (vessels used in Roman Catholic religious ceremonies). Designs became especially elaborate in silver mining areas such as Potosí, in Bolivia, and Guanajuato, Zacatecas, and Taxco (Taxco de Alarcón), in Mexico. Throughout the colonial era, the cities of Lima, Mexico City, and Bogotá, Colombia, were known for their highly developed craftsmanship.

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