Synopses & Reviews
The pictorial genre known as casta painting is one of the most compelling forms of artistic expression from colonial Mexico. Created as sets of consecutive images, the works portray racial mixing among the main groups that inhabited the colony: Indians, Spaniards, and Africans. In this beautifully illustrated book, Ilona Katzew places casta paintings in their social and historical context, showing for the first time the ways in which the meanings of the paintings changed along with shifting colonial politics.
The book examines how casta painting developed art historically, why race became the subject of a pictorial genre that spanned an entire century, who commissioned and collected the works, and what meanings the works held for contemporary audiences. Drawing on a range of previously unpublished archival and visual material, Katzew sheds new light on racial dynamics of eighteenth-century Mexico and on the construction of identity and self-image in the colonial world.
Synopsis
The first in-depth study of a mesmerizing and colorful art from colonial Mexico
The pictorial genre known as casta painting is one of the most compelling forms of artistic expression from colonial Mexico. Created as sets of consecutive images, the works portray racial mixing among the main groups that inhabited the colony: Indians, Spaniards, and Africans. In this beautifully illustrated book, Ilona Katzew places casta paintings in their social and historical context, showing for the first time the ways in which the meanings of the paintings changed along with shifting colonial politics.
The book examines how casta painting developed art historically, why race became the subject of a pictorial genre that spanned an entire century, who commissioned and collected the works, and what meanings the works held for contemporary audiences. Drawing on a range of previously unpublished archival and visual material, Katzew sheds new light on racial dynamics of eighteenth-century Mexico and on the construction of identity and self-image in the colonial world.
Synopsis
This beautifully illustrated book—the first in-depth study of the mesmerizing and colorful casta paintings from colonial Mexico—places them in social and historical context.
“Casta paintings, a phenomenon of eighteenth-century Mexico, portraying mixed racial families and their offspring, have received increasing attention over the past 15 years for what they reveal about control and structure in that colonial society. Katzew’s superbly illustrated book is now the indispensable reference on the subject. . . . This is an important study for various disciplines concerned with colonial Latin America. . . . Highly recommended.”—Choice
“The publication . . . contains richly illuminating scholarship.”—Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times
“The most extensive collection of work in this genre. . . . Profusely illustrated.”—Miguel Juarez, Art Documentation
About the Author
Ilona Katzew is associate curator of Latin American art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.