Latin American Sculpture

V

Retablos

An extremely important category of Latin American sculpture is the retablo (Spanish word meaning “altarpiece”). The retablo, sometimes referred to as a reredos or retable in English, comprises the architectural, sculptural, and painted components around the altar in a Roman Catholic church. Originally these consisted of a framework behind the altar that was meant to hold paintings and polychrome statues or relief carvings. But after about 1670, retablos became far more elaborate and embraced the area around the altar. Extensively decorated with carved or stucco figures, they also incorporated spiral columns modeled after those at Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. These twisting columns are called solomonic because the ancient columns at Saint Peter’s are thought to have come from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. Solomonic columns appeared in retablos throughout Latin America. They are especially spectacular in the retablo of the Franciscan monastery of São Francisco in Salvador (1700-1723), in the Brazilian state of Bahía. There the columns combine with architectural decoration, stone sculpture, painted tiles, stucco work, and frescoes to form a spectacular gilded and polychrome retablo.

The 18th century saw an explosion of retablo construction as the silver boom, improvements in agriculture, and increased trade generated tremendous wealth, leading in turn to the building of new churches and the redecoration of earlier cathedrals and churches. The solomonic baroque style evolved into a new style, sometimes called Churrigueresque (after Spanish architects José Benito Churriguera and his brothers). The flamboyant Churrigueresque style spread from retablos to the facades of churches. In Mexico, Spanish sculptor Jerónimo de Balbás set a precedent for hundreds of subsequent designs with his Altar of the Kings (1724-1734) in the Cathedral of Mexico City. This immense ensemble, covered entirely with gold leaf, fills the apse of the cathedral. Elaborately carved rectangular columns, called estípetes, alternate with broader half columns and polychrome statues in niches.

As the new wealth spread within provincial areas, it benefited both mestizo and Native American patrons. In some areas this triggered a return in the mid-18th century to hybrid styles in architectural decoration. The mixture of European and folkloric elements that had prevailed in the 16th century was widely imitated in newly developing regional centers such as Cuzco, in Peru, and Querétaro, Oaxaca, and Zacatecas, in Mexico. In these areas, the decorations of church facades and interior courtyards featured abstract patterns and figural sculpture that are strikingly reminiscent of Indochristian decoration, the hybrid style developed in Mexico in the 16th century. The influence carried to retablos and other decorations in church interiors, while secular decorative arts such as furniture design showed extraordinary combinations of indigenous techniques, European and Asian imagery, Mudéjar (Hispano-Islamic) design, and folk art motifs.

In Brazil, richly ornamented 18th-century retablos, such as the one in the Church of São Francisco de Asís in Ouro Prêto, provide the centerpieces for elegant church interiors reminiscent of churches in central Europe. The church in Ouro Prêto was designed by Brazilian architect and sculptor Antônio Francisco Lisbôa, known as Aleijadinho (Portuguese for “Little Cripple”). Aleijadinho suffered from a disfiguring illness that is said to have eventually forced him to work with his tools strapped to his wrists. Despite his handicaps, Aleijadinho’s sculptures convey a breathtaking realism, and he is Brazil’s most celebrated pre-modern sculptor. In addition to his work in Ouro Prêto, he carved a moving series of soapstone prophets that guard the entrance to the Church of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos (1800-1805) in Congonhas do Campo, Brazil. These statues express the suffering of the Christian faithful with a typically baroque psychological realism and dramatic sense of movement.

---

---

VI

19th Century

Art academies set up by Latin American governments between 1780 and 1820 functioned as centers of artistic training and as channels for transmitting emerging European art styles. Both the Mexican and Brazilian academies had strong programs in sculpture. In 1791 Spanish sculptor Manuel Tolsá arrived at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City with a vast collection of plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman statues. These served as models for works in the quietly dignified neoclassical style through which he and subsequent academicians expressed a variety of political and social ideals. In Brazil, sculptor Auguste-Marie Taunay helped spread the neoclassical style. By the mid-19th century, academic sculptors such as Spaniard Manuel Vilar in Mexico had begun to infuse the serene forms of neoclassicism with more emotion in keeping with romanticism, a movement then popular in Europe. Vilar’s larger-than-life figure Tlahuicole (1851, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City), for example, uses ancient Greek models to express the emotional intensity of Tlahuicole, a general who died in gladiatorial combat in precolonial Mexico.

VII

20th Century

European movements continued to influence Latin American sculpture in the 20th century. Mexican sculptor Jesús Contreras, for example, was influenced by the heavily modeled, expressive works of French sculptor Auguste Rodin. In the first years of the 20th century Contreras and his younger associates, Mexicans Agustín Ocampo and Fidencio Nava, sculpted increasingly stylized figures. After the 1920s the powerful mural painting movement tended to overwhelm sculpture in importance, especially in Mexico. However, monumental sculptures of indigenous women by Costa Rican-born Mexican sculptor Francisco Zúñiga offer a sculptural parallel to the muralists’ portrayals of native cultures. Guatemalan-born Mexican artist , who is best known for his paintings of simplified figures within geometric designs, also sculpted stylized partial figures. Similarly, Colombian artist Fernando Botero translated the rotund figures of his dreamy, satirical paintings into three-dimensional sculptures.

Abstract sculpture was established in Latin America with free-form metal and wood constructions by German-born sculptor , who worked in Mexico after 1949, and with the geometric sculptures of Colombian . But it was in Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina that international abstract movements of the 1960s, such as op art and minimal art, found fruitful sculptural responses. Brazilian artists Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica both worked in a geometric abstract style related to minimalism. Venezuelans and and Argentines and Eduardo Mac Entyre experimented with the visually hypnotic effects of op art while incorporating movement into their work.