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Loyola University Chicago Libraries

FNAR 353: Latin American Art II Modern to Contemporary

Welcome

Welcome! This guide will introduce you to library resources and services that will assist you as you complete the research paper assignment.

Contact me at amather@luc.edu for research help, book requests, or library service questions. I'm here to help you succeed in your research, and am happy to meet with you to discuss your work and recommend:

New Books

Surreal Spaces

An illustrated biography of the pioneering British artist and writer, tracing her life and work through the many places around the world where she lived The British-born artist and writer Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) is one of the vanguards in the history of women artists and the history of Surrealism. The interests of this visionary--feminism, ecology, the arcane and the mystical, the interconnectedness of everything--are now shared by many. Challenging the conventions of her time, Carrington abandoned family, society, and England to embrace new experiences and forge a unique artistic style in Europe and the Americas. In this evocative illustrated biography, writer and journalist Joanna Moorhead traces her cousin's footsteps, exploring the artist's life, loves, friendships, and work. Leading readers on a personal journey across Britain, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the United States, and Mexico, Surreal Spaces describes the places and experiences that would become etched in Carrington's memory and be echoed, sometimes decades later, in her art and writing--whether her grandmother's kitchen with its giant stove; a remote Cornish hideaway where she holidayed with Max Ernst, Lee Miller, and Man Ray; the Left Bank of Paris; an asylum in Santander, Spain; New York, where she lived among other European exiles; or Mexico City, her final sanctuary. "Houses are really bodies," Carrington wrote in her novella The Hearing Trumpet. "We connect ourselves with walls, roofs and objects just as we hang on to our livers, skeletons, flesh and blood streams." Featuring photographs, drawings, and paintings of the spaces that so richly influenced Carrington's work, Surreal Spaces is an intimate and vivid portrait of a fascinating artist.

Remedios Varo

An exploration of the captivating work and mystical outlook of the modern artist Remedios Varo, focusing on her years in Mexico City   This publication offers a definitive look at the artistic practice of Remedios Varo (1908-1963) following her emigration from Spain to Mexico City in 1941. Her work from 1955 to 1963 made a lasting contribution to modern art and the legacy of Surrealism. In Remedios Varo: Science Fictions, fresh historical and material findings establish the integral relationship between Varo's layered interests--in alchemy, architecture, magic, mysticism, philosophy, and science--and her beguiling technical approach to art making. Essays detail specific works' complex stories and spectacular surfaces. An illustrated taxonomy of Varo's artistic techniques, including automatic mark making as well as careful manipulation of materials and media, offers new insights into the artist's craft. An illustrated inventory of a major portion of Varo's library--published here for the first time--reveals the artist's engagement with a wide range of subjects. Stunning new photography of many of her artworks are presented within a dynamic geometric design inspired by the artist's work. Situating Varo as a woman working in midcentury Mexico City and living among a tight-knit community of local and émigré artists, poets, and thinkers, the catalogue illuminates the complex worldview that shaped her search for individual and collective transcendence.   Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago, in partnership with the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City   Exhibition Schedule   Art Institute of Chicago (July 29, 2023-November 27, 2023)  

The Story of Art Without Men

The story of art as it's never been told before, from the Renaissance to the present day, with more than 300 works of art. How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway? Guided by Katy Hessel, art historian and founder of @thegreatwomenartists, discover the glittering paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century United States and the artist who really invented the "readymade." Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of postwar artists in Latin America, and the women defining art in the 2020s. Have your sense of art history overturned and your eyes opened to many artforms often ignored or dismissed. From the Cornish coast to Manhattan, Nigeria to Japan, this is the history of art as it's never been told before.

Radical Form

A timely reassessment of some of the most daring projects of abstraction from South America. "Sullivan's close reading, contextual sensitivity and sidestepping of grand simplifying narratives make this book an extremely valuable addition to the growing literature on art from regions outside the classic mainstream."--Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Art Newspaper Emphasizing the open-ended and self-critical nature of the projects of abstraction in South America from the 1930s through the mid-1960s, this important new volume focuses on the artistic practices of Joaquín Torres-García, Tomás Maldonado, Alejandro Otero, and Lygia Clark. Megan A. Sullivan positions the adoption of modernist abstraction by South American artists as part of a larger critique of the economic and social transformations caused by Latin America's state-led programs of rapid industrialization. Sullivan thoughtfully explores the diverse ways this skepticism of modernization and social and political change was expressed. Ultimately, the book makes it clear that abstraction in South America was understood not as an artistic style to be followed but as a means to imagine a universalist mode of art, a catalyst for individual and collective agency, and a way to express a vision of a better future for South American society.

Essays on 20th Century Latin American Art

* Covers a wide range of topics in Latin American/Caribbean/Central American Art History * Concise analysis of Latin American artists, works, and art movements * An interdisciplinary approach to the topics discussed that places art in its contemporary historical perspective * Includes material on art from Central America and the Caribbean, Women's Art, and Popular Art