Reflections on the Сoncept of Style in the Colonial Art of Latin America From the XVI^th Through the XVIII^th Century

Latin American art is extremely controversial and hard to analyze. To every thesis put forward by the researcher, an antithesis immediately arises. Formation and evolution of the colonial artistic style in Latin America from the XVI^th through the XVIII^th century is always a challenge and, at the same time, an incentive for scholarly research, since it is a synthesis of styles borrowed from European art, first and foremost from Spain and Portugal, in the period lasting from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. The colonial powers served as a go-between in the process of adaptation, rooting and further development in Latin America of such regional styles as Mudéjar, Plateresque, Isabelino, Manueline, Churrigueresco, which left a profound imprint on the artistic culture of the New Continent. These artistic styles, embodied in architecture, decorative and monumental-decorative art of the colonies, underwent transformations as the cultural patterns of indigenous peoples started to resurge.

Latin American Baroque was developed in the colonial Peru, by the so-called Andean school. The rich decoration of churches, the gilded ornaments, the carnival of images of all sorts testify to the fact that the indigenous artists had a view of their own of the cultural codes of the European world. By the end of the colonial period, when national identity was already solidly established in Latin America, local elements began to influence the borrowed European styles to an even greater extent, imbuing them with their own special pictorial vision, coining new and unique genres of their own. Those architectural and decorative configurations, modified in accordance with local traditions, with their original worldview and perception of beauty, paved the way to original Latin American artistic patterns that enabled them to transgress the boundaries, from the realm of artistic dialects to that of independent national styles.

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