Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Evolution of Mexican landscape in painting

José María Velasco. Valle de México. Internet download
Rufino Tamayo. Paisaje con rocas. Internet download.
Chicano painting from Cheech Marin´s collection. Downloaded from Marin´s web page

The concept of landscape was born in Europe, in the Modern era, as opposite from the free nature. The earliest evidence of this concept was the landscape painting, sometimes with the intention of giving shape to wetlands and unexplored lands.
The landscape is not only the complex system of elements such as air, water, soil, plants, it is mainly the scenario for human activity. Though many authors defend the universality of aesthetic preferences, the heterogeneity of issues and theoretical orientations in anthropological studies on the landscape have far avoided a cross cultural applicability.
In Europe, the concept of landscape was born with modern times (Renaissance), when man freed himself from the tight bonds of Nature.
Now, particular attention is given to approaches focussing on the relation between nature and cultures, historical imagery to identity, as well as landscape cognition and finally globalization.
The earliest evidence of this process is the birth of landscape painting. In Mexico, after the European Schools of the Colonial times, with their religious themes, there were two major representative figures of the XIX century Mexican national landscape painting, Eugenio Landesio and Jose Maria Velasco.
It is interesting to see that as the multiple theories on cultural landscape developed along the years, they paralleled in its artistic representation, reflecting a new approach, specially in the Chicano painting.
The classical one point of view landscape, with no more connotations than a photograph, gave place to a reformulation of the multi perspective space, first in the surrealism of artistic vanguards (ex. Rufino Tamayo’s paintings) and nowadays in a kind of figurative abstractism-pluralism emphasized with the addition of daily objects representing folk art in themselves.
The folk art is spread in the back yard, where one of its forms is the utilization of recycled objects as car tires, painted cans and chicken pots, etc. This practice may originates from the poverty, but once the objects have the plant inside, they look very attractive.

2 comments:

  1. QUE PINTURAS TAN DISTINTAS ENTRE SI, PERO TODAS CON MUCHA PERSONALIDAD..
    Gracias MYRIAM... Saludos "-"

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    Replies
    1. Hola Conxita, a mí las pinturas de Tamayo me encantan, tal vez más que las de Rivera. Los artistas mexicanos son muy sensibles. Un beso,

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