The Spanish Colonial Arts Society's collections exhibit the depth and breadth of Spanish colonial art forms from both Old World and New World perspectives. From santos to silver to furniture, tools and tinwork to textiles, the collections feature numerous comparative objects from colonial and non-colonial countries alike, demonstrating the various influences that shaped the traditional Hispanic art forms made around the world today.
Among the many places represented in the collections are Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Peru, Brazil, the Caribbean, the Philippines and Goa, the Portuguese colony off the coast of India. Objects from Italy, Russia, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and France also are included. And items from as far away as China and Tibet provide far-reaching examples of the various objects that were imported to the colonies, including New Mexico during the colonial era.
Many of these objects were introduced to the New World by the Spanish in the first half of the sixteenth century and reflected the artistic transitions taking place in Spain at the time. The early art of the colonial period was somewhat eclectic, incorporating elements from late Gothic, early Renaissance and Mudejar (Muslim-Christian) styles. In the late sixteenth century, Gothic and Mudejar motifs briefly gave way to a pure late Renaissance/Mannerist style before adapting to a more vivacious Baroque style in the early seventeenth century. A lighter Baroque style, influenced by the European Rococo style, took hold in Mexico in the early eighteenth century, only to be replaced by Neoclassicism at the century's end.
From the seventeenth century on, Spanish friars in New Mexico imported religious sculptures and paintings from Europe and Mexico to adorn newly built mission churches. By the second half of the eighteenth century, several New Mexican artists were transforming native woods and other materials into bultos, retablos, hide paintings and more in a local version of the Baroque style. By placing these New Mexican art works within the context of the rest of the world, the Society's collections illustrate the multicultural character of traditional New Mexican Hispanic art.
"I think the genius of truly great art is the ability to be innovative within a tradition, and I think New Mexican Hispanic art is a real example of that," says Spanish colonial art scholar Donna Pierce, Chief Curator at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art. "This collection shows how a culture maintained a really strong connection to its traditional roots in Spain or Mexico or Latin America, and at the same time, adapted it to a local need or aesthetic so that it has its own distinct character."
The Spanish Colonial Arts Society recognized the value of such comparative objects as early as the 1930s, when it began to acquire religious sculptures and paintings that were imported to New Mexico from Mexico during the colonial period. But it wasn't until the 1950s, when E. Boyd became Society curator, that an emphasis was placed on broadening the focus of the collection to include more objects from other parts of the world.
Together with her assistant Alan Vedder, Boyd sought items from Latin America, Spain and elsewhere that could have been imported to New Mexico and might have served as prototypes for traditional New Mexican objects. During two trips to Spain in the early 1960s, for instance, Vedder and his wife Ann purchased thirty-one objects for the Society. Among their finds were provincial religious paintings and sculpture to compare with New Mexican bultos and retablos.
Pierce, who succeeded Vedder as curator in 1989, has continued to fulfill Boyd's and Vedder's global collecting mission by adding other non-New Mexican objects to the collections. Among the Society's most recent accessions are a silver holy water sconce made by the famous Catalan silversmith Francesc Carreras y Duran of Barcelona, Spain, in 1825, and an 1890 blue-on-white majolica vase from the workshop of the distinguished ceramicist Ysauro Uriarte in Pueblo, Mexico.
The Museum of Spanish Colonial Art introduces visitors to these and other worldly objects in Un Mundo de Arte (A World of Art,) a select exhibit of some of the Society's most spectacular non-New Mexican acquisitions. Together with the museum's many historical and contemporary New Mexican objects, viewers will be presented with a thorough picture of how traditional art forms can change and flourish in modern times.
Making Hispanic History
Collections - Global Perspective
