Pre-Columbian America: Ritual Arts of the New World

This work, a virtually unique opportunity for those wishing to learn about pre-Hispanic America and its art, is divided into two parts and includes an essay by the Nobel Prize Winner for Literature Octavio Paz. The first part of the book is historical and, essentially, examines the brutal shock suffered by two worlds between 1492, the year of the discovery of America, and 1532, when Pizarro subdued and conquered the Inca empire in Peru, eleven years after Hernando Cortés had destroyed the Aztecs in Mexico.

The connection between what took place in those dramatic years is illustrated with maps, old engravings and color photographs of various pre-Columbian archeological sites, as well as some of the background scenarios linked to the exploits of the European navigators. The second part looks at the major civilisations (Maya, Aztec, Inca, etc.), and some little-known although equally fascinating cultures, attributed with the production of the approximately one hundred and fifty works of art from Mesoamerica, Central America, and the Andean Cordillera and the Amazon Basin, shown in full page color illustrations. The authors-- historians and specialists-- provide in these pages a clear vision of what has often been drawn out in long-winded explanations. Most importantly, they pause on the aesthetic value of peoples that have, on many occasions, been called "primitive," without however omitting to place the sculptures, pottery and fabrics selected by the authors themselves in a precise anthropological context.

The result is an exemplary work of interest and delight that neither experts nor the inquisitive will be able to resist.