Art Ad Culture in Pureto Rico Art and Culture in Puerto Rico

Arts and crafts in Puerto Rico

Arts

There is a strong artistic presence among Puerto Ricans, whether from artists formally trained in art schools, or self-taught amateurs.

Serious students of Puerto Rican fine art always become to the Constitute of Puerto Rican Civilization in the Dominican Convent in Erstwhile San Juan. It'due south the best source of information on the island about Puerto Rican arts and crafts.

With its dozen or so museums and even more than fine art galleries, One-time San Juan is the greatest repository of Puerto Rican craft. Galleries sell everything from pre-Columbian artifacts to paintings past relatively gimmicky artists such every bit Angel Botello, who died in 1986. The Galería Botello, at 208 del Cristo St., was his onetime domicile. He restored the colonial mansion himself; now his paintings and sculptures are on display there.

Another skilful place to see Puerto Rican fine art is the Museum of the Academy of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. Because of space limitations, the museums galleries can exhibit merely a fifth of their vast collection at ane fourth dimension, but the work is always of meridian-notch quality. The collection ranges from pre-Columbian artifacts to works by today'south major painters.

The greatest fine art on the island is at the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Las Americas Avenue, in Puerto Rico's largest city. The collection, donated by former governor Luis A. Ferré, ranges from Jan van Eyck's Salvatore Mundi to Rossetti's confrontational Daugthers of King Lear. The museum edifice was designed by Edward Durell Rock, who also designed New York's Museum of Modern Fine art. Works are displayed here in a honeycomb of skylit hexagonal rooms. Puerto Rican artists who are represented include José Campeche (1751-1809) and Francisco Oller (1833-1917). In addition to such European masters every bit Rubens, van Dyck, and Murillo, the museum features works by Latin American creative person, including some by the Mexican Diego Rivera.

Museo de Arte de Ponce
Photo: Museo de Arte de Ponce

The get-go major Puerto Rican artist of note was José Campeche, an 18th-century "Sanjuanero" who lived his unabridged life in and drew inspiration from the city of his birth. The son of a freed slave and a immigrant from the Canary Islands; Campeche was greatly influenced by a Castilian court painter who was banished to San Juan. Since Campeche was fascinated past religious paintings, many of his 400 works were for churches. He was likewise a distinguished portrait painter, whose subjects ranged from governors of the colony to local personalities to members of well-to-practise families. Some of his paintings are Nativity of Christ, Vision of St. Francis of Assissi, Virgin of Mercy, Don Miguel Antonio de Ustariz, and many versions of the Virgin and Child. Many of Campeche'south paintings are found in churches and in the Cathedral in old San Juan.

El Velorio, 1893
Francisco Oller y Cestero

Francisco Oller y Cestero, born in 1833, was as well an eminent Puerto Rican painter. He was greatly influenced by European fine art, especially the works of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906, French painter) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973, Spanish painter). Oller became the start Latin American artist to suit the impressionists' interest in light and color to the tropical skies of Puerto Rico. Island scenes fascinated him, and he depicted everything from life on a sugarcane plantation to a funeral wake in the Puerto Rican countryside. His still lifes of local flora, including palm trees and bananas, are eagerly sought by collectors. Amid his portraits: "Un mendigo" (A Ragamuffin), "Un cesante" (Laid Off), "El almuerzo del rico" (The Luncheon of the Rich), "El almuerzo del pobre" (The Luncheon of the Poor), "La escuela del maestro Rafael" (Teacher Rafael'south School), "Un boca abajo" (Face Down), amongst others.

La Dama a Caballo
José Campeche

La Promesa
Miguel Pou

Many Puerto Rican artists have followed in Oller's footsteps, including Ramón Fradé (1875-1954) and Miguel Pou (1880-1968). Frade'south painting of The Jíbaro pays homage to the country peasant farmer. In that location are other works by Frade, El Niño Campesino, El Pan Nuestro de Cada Día, Ensenada, La Poza, and many others. Outstanding paintings by Pou are: Los Coches de Ponce, La Promesa, La Calle Loíza, and La Catedral de Ponce.

El Pan Nuestro De Cada Día
Ramón Frade

Funded by regime, a tradition of artistic posters became popular in the 1940s. Printmaking still flourishes, and the field has attracted such artists as Antonio Martorell and José Rosa.

Since the 1960s, nearly every major Puerto Rican artist has studied away, in both Europe and America. Some artists prefer to live abroad, returning to the isle from time to fourth dimension for inspiration. One of them, Rafael Ferrer, is perhaps better known in New York art galleries than in San Juan. Savvy collectors are also buying the works of well-known contemporary artists as Ivette Cabrera, Consuelo Gotay, Juan Ramón Velázquez, Lorenzo Homar, Rafael Tufiño, and Jorge Zeno.

Crafts

The virtually impressive of the isle's crafts are the Santos, carved religious figures that accept been produced since the 1500s. Craftspeople who make these are called santeros; using dirt, aureate, stone, or cedar wood, they cleave figurines representing saints, usually from 8 to 20 inches alpine. Before the Spanish colonization, small-scale statues called cemi stood in native tribal villages and camps every bit objects of veneration, and Puerto Rico's santos may derive from that pre-Columbian tradition. Every boondocks has its patron saint and every home has its santos to protect the family. For some families, worshiping the santos replaces a traditional mass.

Art historians view the carving of santos as Puerto Rico'southward greatest contribution to the plastic arts. The primeval figures were richly baroque, indicating a strong Spanish influence, but as the islanders began to affirm their own identity, the carved figures often became simpler.

In etching santos, craftspeople oft used handmade tools. Sometimes such natural materials as vegetable dyes and fifty-fifty man hair were used. The saints represented by most santos tin can be identified by their accompanying symbols. For case, Saint Anthony is commonly depicted with the infant Jesus and a book. Possibly the almost popular group of santos are the Three King. The Trinity and the Nativity are besides depicted ofttimes. Art experts claim that santos-making approached its zenith at the turn of the century, although hundreds of santeros still do their craft throughout the island.

Some of the best santos on the island tin can be seen at the Capilla del Cristo in Quondam San Juan. The most popular figures are the virgins, male saints, and the Three Kings.

Another Puerto Rican craft has undergone a big revival merely every bit it seemed that information technology would disappear forever. Originating in Spain, mundillos (tatted fabrics) are the product of a blazon of bobbin lace-making. This item kind of lace, five centuries old, exists simply in Puerto Rico and Spain.

The showtime lace fabricated in Puerto Rico was called torchon ("beggar'southward lace"). Early on examples of beggar's lace were considered of inferior quality, but artisans today take transformed this fabric into a frail art form, eagerly sought by collectors. Lace bands, called entrados have two straight borders, whereas the other traditional fashion, puntilla, has both southward straight and a scalloped edge. The best place to run across the arts and crafts of the mundillo is the Folk Arts Heart at Dominican Convent in Former San Juan. This center has data on island shops that brand and sell mundillos. Yous tin besides attend the Puerto Rican Weaving Festival, held annually at the stop of April in the town of Isabela.

Possibly the near popular of all Puerto Rican crafts are the frightening caretas-papier-maché masks worn at island carnivals. Tangles of menacing horns, fang-toothed leering expression, and bulging eyes of these half-demon, half-animal creations send children running screaming to their parents. At carnival time, they are worn by costumed revelers chosen vejigantes (bay-he-GAHN-tay). The proper name comes from the Castilian words vejiga, meaning bladder, and gigante, pregnant giant. Vejigantes ofttimes wear bat-winged jump-suits, roam the streets either individually or in groups and behave inflated cow bladders (vejigas) at the terminate of a stick. With these bladders they harmlessly hit people during the festivities.

The origins of these masks and carnivals may become back to medieval Spain and/or tribal Africa. A processional tradition in Spain, dating from the early 17th century, was intended to terrify sinners with marching devils in the promise that they would render to church. The vejigantes represented the Devil in the holy battle between good and evil. Originally the vejigante were demons who appeared at the Spanish patronal festival of Santiago (St. James), as representatives of the Moors fought past Spanish knights. Puerto Rico composite this Castilian procession with the marked tradition brought past slaves from Africa. Some historians believe that the Taínos besides were achieved mask makers, which would brand this a very ancient tradition indeed.

The Vejigante is such an old character that he is even described in the classic novel Don Quixote written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605. Today the vejigante have been recreated by Puerto Rican popular tradition equally figures of resistance confronting colonialism and imperialism.

The predominant mask colors, at least traditionally, were black, red and yellowish, all symbols of hellfire and damnation. Today, pastels are more probable used. Each vejigante sports at least two or tree horns, although some masks may take hundreds of horns in all shapes and sizes. A carnival is held in Loiza each year, where vejigantes are the master attraction, there are iv chief costumed characters: el Caballero (the knight), los vejigantes, los viejos, (the elders), and las locas (the crazy women).

Mask making in Ponce, the major eye for this arts and crafts, and in Loíza Aldea, a palm-fringed boondocks on the island's northeastern coast, has since led to a renaissance of Puerto Rican folk art.

You can purchase these masks yr-circular at various places, even in the homes of the mask makers, providing that you have their addresses. Although many masks are extremely elaborate and expensive, they typically range in price from $10 to $75. The premier store selling these masks is Puerto Rican Art and Crafts, 204 Fortaleza Street, in Old San Juan. Masks can be seen in action at the three big masquerade carnivals on the island: the Ponce Festival in February, the Festival of Loíza Aldea in July, and the Día de las Mascaras at Hatillo in December.

Sources:
Porter, Darwin and Danforth Prince, Frommer'southward Comprehensive Travel Guide - Puerto Rico '95-'96, New York, New York, Macmillan Travel, 1992, 1994, pp. 29-30.

Other Resource

• History of Puerto Rican Painting

Did Yous Know?

Puerto Rico is one among hundreds of small islands formed approximately 185 million years ago when a large shift of tectonic plates sank some areas and pushed other areas upwardly forming small-scale islands.

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