buried mirror: latest reflections

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Wilfredo Lam (1902-19982) was an influential modernist Cuban painter. Among those who acknowledge his influence is the contemporary painter Carlos Luna. While Luna was born in Cuba, his work “deals in part with the duality of Cuban and Mexican heritage,” according to the Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) in Long Beach, where a show [...]

This photo of a table top painted with images of colorful fruit, taken in a crafts shop in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Mexico, is from Lucy Nieto’s photostream. .

Juan Soriano (1920-2006) was born in Guadalajara, son of veterans of the Mexican revolution. Something of a prodigy, he developed his distinctive style after moving to Mexico City when he was fifteen. According to the exhibition label for this painting (The Dead Girl, 1938, oil on panel, 18 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches (47 x [...]

Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Arte is offering what looks like a strong show of Mexican printmaking from 1920-1950. The full title is México y la Estampa Moderna, 1920-1950: Una Revolución en las Artes Gráficas. Included are works by Diego Rivera, Clemente Orozco, Leopoldo Méndez, and many less familiar artists. Click the image above for [...]

The theft of Impressionist paintings in Switzerland has made news lately. In fact, it has caused the insurance on art exhibitions to go up for museums around the world (like the museum where I work). But Mexico still holds the distinction for one of the most spectacular art heists. In 1985 thieves made off with [...]

This Maximon image was created on scratchboard by student artist Edwin Harris, Jr., of Georgia. On his blog he gives a little background on the process.

Arte Maya Tz’utuhil is a one-man business of Joe Johnston, based in San Francisco. Its website is www.artemaya.com. Johnson travels to Guatemala once or twice a year to acquire paintings — mainly from artists in the Lake Atitlan area — for representation for sale. The website offers a wide range of painting (and calendars), from [...]

El Curandero Gallery, located in La Antigua, Guatemala, looks like a good source for Guatemalan masks, wooden figures, slingshots, ceramics, paintings, and textiles. Among their current listings are these two Maximon masks. The one on the left dates from the 1950s and the other from the 1940s. Maximon is an auspicious folk deity best known [...]

Working Gringos has put together the best list of museums in Merida that I have seen. They include Yucatan Museum of Popular Art (Museo de Arte Popular de Yucatan) Galeria Merida The Yucatan Music Museum (Museo de La Canción) Olimpo Governor’s Palace (Palacio del Govierno) MACAY (Museo de Contemporaneo Ateneo de Yucatan) Merida City Museum [...]

While we’re on the subject of Rufino Tamayo paintings, I should mention, in case you haven’t heard, this story. It seems not everyone is a fan of brightly colored abstraction. At any rate, someone threw Tamayo’s 1970 painting Tres Personajes into the trash. The painting had been stolen from its owner in 1987. Nothing was [...]

Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo’s Trovador (Troubador) has been removed from a Christie’s auction after fans of the painting filed a lawsuit challenging the work’s sale by Randolph College. The painting was to be the “crown jewel” of the Latin American-focused auction, in which twelve sales records were broken, as 65 items sold for 21.6 million [...]

That’s the title of this colorful painting by Namaste Nancy. The painting’s effectiveness comes from its reduction of elements to just what is essential. Read more at her site.

That’s the name of an exhibit that uns through December 16 at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, “the nation’s largest Latino arts institution and the only Latino museum accredited by the American Association of Museums.” On blogs from Mexico and Guatemala this year there has appeared some discussion about whether Mesoamerica should [...]

You can hardly go wrong with Antigua, but Rudy Girón goes the extra mile. Every day he posts a new photo from the city, along with some pretty interesting commentary. Some of his favorite topics are food, architecture, and signage, but really nothing is out of bounds. Well worth checking out (click iamge below).

While we’re on the subject of Yucatan art, let’s check out some black and white photography. Robert Hansen, who has been photographing the Yucatan for the past eight years, has collected his photos in a large-format book called Yucatan Passages, published by Laguna Wilderness Press. The image shown is Loltun cave, “a large cavern showing [...]

Yucatan Living has a nice article on the Merida-based painter Samuel Barrera. Trained in law, Barrera developed a passion for painting while designing and creating theater sets. After years of struggle, most recently selling his art in the Parque de la Madre outside of the Jose Peon Contreras Theatre, Barrera seems to be breaking through, [...]

This is a watercolor I did some years ago.

  This stela was purchased by the de Young museum in San Francisco in 1999. According to the museum, the stela’s origins are unknown. “It could not be identified by site, epigraphy, or style, and its imagery represented a blend of elements from works found in both Guatemala and Mexico,” said the museum in a [...]

Tigre fe54 has a nice set of door knocker photos from Antigua, Guatemala, at his flickr site. Clickable thumbnails appear below, via the Crossroads plugin.

In every civilization of the ancient world, there are art works and monuments that stand out among their fellows as objects of special character. The great portrait sculptures that stand in silent rows down the center of the Great Plaza of copan created one of these special places. They constitute one of the great masterpieces [...]