Essays on Mexican Art

This volume contains a collection of 14 essays by Mexican writer and poet Octavio Paz (1914-1998). Beginning with an analysis of Mesoamerican cosmology, these essays, written between 1960 and 1986 and illustrated with color plates, discuss topics such as Rufino Tamayo and other contemporary Mexican artists, realist photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo and "two remarkable women," the surrealist-influenced painters Frida Kahlo and Maria Izquierdo. He also compares pre-Columbian Totonac figurines to laughter in Baudelaire or contrasts the portraits of Mexican village artist Hermenegildo Bustos with Egyptian sarcophagi portraits associated with the cult of Isis and Osiris