Latin American art

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images & Videos

Diego Rivera: Popular History of Mexico

16th century lion fountain

Aztec manuscript illustration showing figures in elaborate costumes dancing in a circle, with two larger deities, Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl, at the center, from Codex Borbonicus.

Illustrated page from the Mendoza Codex showing Aztec boys and girls engaged in daily activities and education, with handwritten Nahuatl text and colorful drawings divided into horizontal sections.

cross in Acolmán, Mexico

A textured blue background with white text reading Candomble.

frescoes by Juan Gersón

Aleijadinho: Prophet sculpture

Santiago Matamoros

At a Glance

Christ Child

Latin American arts summary

Related Questions

How did Alfredo Jaar's This Is Not America challenge the use of the word America?
How did Antonio Berni use Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel to portray urban poverty?
How did Armando Morales refer to Nicaragua's Sandinista revolution in Farewell to Sandino?
How did Carlos Leppe use performance art to criticize repression in Chile?
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How did Chilean arpilleras commemorate people who were jailed, tortured, or disappeared under Augusto Pinochet?
How did David Alfaro Siqueiros use industrial materials and techniques in mural painting?
How did Diamela Eltit's 1980 performance address poverty, prostitution, and social abuse?
How did Diego Rivera use fresco painting to make art accessible to a broad public?
How did Diego Rivera's murals at Chapingo portray Indigenous peoples and the Spanish conquest?
How did Francisca Núñez use discarded materials to represent poverty and environmental waste?
How did Frida Kahlo draw on Mexican folk art and pre-Columbian art in her self-portraits?
How did Jac Leirner turn devalued Brazilian currency into assemblage art?
How did José Clemente Orozco's murals differ from Diego Rivera's murals?
How did José Gamarra use forests and historical figures in his paintings?
How did José Guadalupe Posada influence the Mexican mural movement?
How did Juan Correa portray the meeting between Hernán Cortés and Montezuma?
How did Neoclassicism support Spanish and Portuguese authority in Latin America before independence?
How did Oswaldo Viteri use indigenous textile dolls to comment on institutional power?
How did Panamanian Kuna molas express the Kuna worldview?
How did Roberto Matta's art connect Surrealism with Latin American political imagery?
How did Spanish and Portuguese colonization change visual art in Latin America?
How did Surrealism appeal to Latin American artists?
How did Tilsa Tsuchiya use Peruvian heritage to explore gender and identity?
How did Vicente Albán portray people and products of Ecuador in Fruits of Ecuador?
How did ex-voto paintings influence artists such as Frida Kahlo and Julio Galán?
How did indigenous, European, and African traditions shape Latin American visual arts?
How did the Baroque style develop distinctive Latin American themes?
How did the Mexican mural renaissance influence artists elsewhere in Latin America?
How did the return of democracy affect Latin American artists and art markets by 2000?
What Latin American events were shown in the paintings of the Santa Ana Master?
What events led José Vasconcelos to commission public murals in Mexico after the Mexican Revolution?
What was the purpose of the Royal Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City?
Which subjects did Diego Rivera include in his murals at Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education?
Why did David Alfaro Siqueiros paint murals in Chile's Escuela México?
Why did Latin American artists begin to paint local landscapes and daily life before independence?
Why did indigenous artists carve stone crosses with foliage in colonial Mexico?
Why did indigenous artists contribute to the construction and decoration of colonial churches?
Why did many Latin American artists live abroad during the 20th century?
Why did political revolutions lead to a revival of public muralism in Cuba and Nicaragua?
Why did printmaking become an important art form for reaching large audiences in Latin America?
Why did the Ramona Parra Brigade make temporary murals after the 1973 coup in Chile?
Why is Manuel Tolsá's statue of King Charles IV important in Mexican Neoclassical art?
Why were African slaves brought to Brazil during the colonial period?

Diego Rivera: Popular History of Mexico — Diego Rivera: Popular History of Mexico Detail from Popular History of Mexico, mosaic mural by Diego Rivera, 1953; on the Teatro des los Insurgentes, Mexico City.

Latin American art

visual arts

Written by

John F. Scott

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Latin American art, artistic traditions that developed in Mesoamerica, Central America, and South America after contact with the Spanish and the Portuguese beginning in 1492 and 1500, respectively, and continuing to the present. This article will not discuss the art of non-Iberian colonial holdings that began late in the 16th century and culminated in the 17th; for these territories, see individual country articles (e.g., Haiti, Guyana, Jamaica). For more technical explorations of media, see individual...

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