Neocolonial: Inventing Modern Latin American Nations, Mayer Center Symposium XX

In the first half of the 1900s, Latin American artists, architects, and designers searched for visual languages that matched the modern identities of their young nations. Surprisingly, many found their answers in the aesthetics of their colonial pasts. This symposium volume explores that paradoxical Neocolonialism by examining a wide array of art, from painting and architecture to furniture and graphic design. A group of international scholars probe the meanings, cultural agendas, and contradictions that emerged when artists in democratic nations grounded their work in the visual regime of imperial Spain at a time of rising consciousness of Indigenous cultures and Panamericanism.
 
In essays about countries such as Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Venezuela over more than a half century, Neocolonial: Inventing Modern Latin American Nations presents the ways that artists, architects, and designers adapted to political and aesthetic realities so as to create a renewed visual identity. These explorations—evident in designs for books, furniture, and magazines and the construction of private homes and large-scale urban planning for modern cities—showcase a style that sought to define national identities for citizens and international audiences alike.
 
A richly illustrated volume featuring previously unpublished images from research trips, architectural and design archives, and seldom-seen historical materials marks the twentieth symposium volume from the Denver Art Museum’s Mayer Center for Ancient and Latin American Art. This groundbreaking study offers the most recent and comprehensive examination of the arts during a politically volatile period of transformation and the redefinition of national identity across Latin America.

 

Jorge F. Rivas Pérez is the Denver Art Museum’s Frederick & Jan Mayer Curator of Latin American Art.