In recent years, tremendous attention has been focused on the Arts of 18th and 19th century New Mexico. This colonial period benefited from a creative and religious community that populated the region. Retablos, painted panels depicting saints worshiped in churches and private homes, were an important part of the rich culture. The Lyon Collection beautifully illustrates the breadth of Retablo painting by exmaining specific Santo's stylistic development as well as the iconography and social history of each painting. This landmarl publication will be of great use to the ongoing study of colonial southwestern art and history. 107 colour illustrations

Studies retabloes--Mexican paintings on tin created in the latter half of the nineteenth century--from art, religious, and historical perspectives, and discusses efforts made to restore and conserve the artwork.

The first part of the book is given to an analysis of folk retablo painting. The second part concentrates on iconography and on why certain images of Christ, Mary, and the saints were venerated. The third part examines ex-votos, small images painted to commemorate the donor's gratitude for a favor.

This vivid study, richly illustrated with forty color photographs, offers a multilayered analysis of retablos—folk images painted on tin that are offered as votives of thanks for a miracle granted or a favor bestowed—created by Mexican migrants to the United States. Durand and Massey analyze 124 contemporary retablo texts, scrutinizing the shifting subjects and themes that constitute a running record of the migrant's unique experience. The result is a vivid work of synthesis that connects the history of an art form and a people, links two very different cultures, and allows a deeper understanding of a major twentieth-century theme—the drama of transnational migration.

Santos and Saints is a new book, though the title has been around for over twenty years. This new edition provides greater detail and newly available information to illustrate the santero's art and to describe the tradition roles of santos in both religious and secular life. Santos and Saints has served for two decades as the best available guide to the religious folk art of New Mexico. In its new edition, it has become even more valuable to scholars and general readers alike.

Infinitas Gracias is the first collection of the work of Alfredo Vilchis Roque, one of Mexico's most famous contemporary painters, and his sons. In the tradition of Catholic votives, each painting tells a miraculous tale and gives thanks to the intervening saint. Ablaze with intense color hearkening back to the natural pigment dyes of ancient Mexico, these works portray the kaleidoscope of issues that constitute modern urban existence. With over 200 paintings, from circus adventures to household accidents to adultery, drugs, and prostitution, Infinitas Gracias weaves together a bizarre tapestry of stories, some disturbing, some comical -- all unerringly wrought and profoundly touching.

"An emerging field of study that explores the Hispanic minority in the United States, Latino Studies is enriched by an interdisciplinary perspective. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, demographers, linguists, as well as religion, ethnicity, and culture scholars, among others, bring a varied, multifaceted approach to the understanding of a people whose roots are all over the Americas and whose permanent home is north of the Rio Grande. Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies offers an authoritative, trustworthy, and up-to-date intellectual map to this ever-changing discipline."--Editorial page.

More than 350 beautiful color photographs depict 18th to mid-20th century Mexican devotional art, including danced masks, devils and angels, santos, milagritos, retablos, and ex-votos. They were used in religious ceremonies at home and church, and include wood carvings and items of clay, stone, metal and paper. Seven essays cover the history and meaning of the works.

Baroque art flourished in seventeenth-century Seville during a tumultuous period of economic decline, social conflict, and natural disasters. This volume explores the patronage that fueled this frenzy of religious artistic and architectural activity and the lasting effects it had on the city and its citizens. Amanda Wunder investigates the great public projects of sacred artwork that were originally conceived as medios divinos—divine solutions to the problems that plagued Seville. These commissions included new polychromed wooden sculptures and richly embroidered clothing for venerable old images, gilded altarpieces and monumental paintings for church interiors, elaborate ephemeral decorations and festival books by which to remember them, and the gut renovation or rebuilding of major churches that had stood for hundreds of years. Meant to revive the city spiritually, these works also had a profound real-world impact. Participation in the production of sacred artworks elevated the social standing of the artists who made them and the devout benefactors who commissioned them, and encouraged laypeople to rally around pious causes. Using a diverse range of textual and visual sources, Wunder provides a compelling look at the complex visual world of seventeenth-century Seville and the artistic collaborations that involved all levels of society in the attempt at its revitalization. Vibrantly detailed and thoroughly researched, Baroque Seville is a fascinating account of Seville’s hard-won transformation into one of the foremost centers of Baroque art in Spain during a period of crisis.

Seminal moments, rites of passage, crystalline vignettes--a memoir about growing up brown at the U.S./Mexico border. The tradition of retablo painting dates back to the Spanish Conquest in both Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. Humble ex-votos, retablos are usually painted on repurposed metal, and in one small tableau they tell the story of a crisis, and offer thanks for its successful resolution. In this uniquely framed memoir, playwright Octavio Solis channels his youth in El Paso, Texas. Like traditional retablos, the rituals of childhood and rites of passage are remembered as singular, dramatic events, self-contained episodes with life-changing reverberations. Living in a home just a mile from the Rio Grande, Octavio is a skinny brown kid on the border, growing up among those who live there, and those passing through on their way North. From the first terrible self-awareness of racism to inspired afternoons playing air trumpet with Herb Alpert, from an innocent game of hide-and-seek to the discovery of a Mexican girl hiding in the cotton fields, Solis reflects on the moments of trauma and transformation that shaped him into a man.