Books on Mexican Art & Culture

The Maya: Voices in Stone

Published by Turner.
Edited by Alejandra Martínez de Velasco Cortina, María Elena Vega Villalobos. Text by David Stuart, Ana Luisa Izquierdo y de la Cueva, Lynneth S. Lowe Negrón, María Teresa Uriarte Castañeda, Tomás Pérez Suárez, Marciela Ayala Falcón, Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo, Erik Velásquez García, Nikolai Grube, Ana García Barrios, María Elena Vega Villalobos, Jesús Galindo Trejo, Stanislaw Iwaniszewski, Robert Romero Sandoval, et al.

The extraordinary culture of the Pre-Hispanic Mayans, in a broad range of subjects and approaches by international scholars

PUBLISHER
Turner

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 11.5 x 11.5 in. / 516 pgs / 300 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 2/23/2016
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2016 p. 78   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788416354870 TRADE
List Price: $90.00 CAD $120.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Great Maya Cities of Campeche

Homage to Román Piña Chán

Published by Turner.
Text by Antonio Benavides Castillo, et al.

This publication is a tribute to the work of Mexican archaeologist and anthropologist Román Piña Chán (1920–2001). Originally from the Campeche region in Mexico, Piña Chán devoted his life to researching pre-Columbian cultures, particularly Mayan cities and communities excavated in his home state.

PUBLISHER
Turner

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 11.75 x 12.75 in. / 300 pgs / 100 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 9/29/2015
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2015 p. 201   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788416142668 FLAT40
List Price: $60.00 CAD $79.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

The Maya in Campeche

Published by Turner.
Foreword by Fernando E. Ortega Bernés, Rafael Tovar y De Teresa, Carlos Vidal Angles. Text by Mario Humberto Ruz Sosa, Daniela Maldonado Cano, Briceida Cuevas Cob, Cessia Esther Chuc Uc, Ella Fanny Quintal Avilés, Fidencio Briceño Chel, María Jesús Cen Montuy.

Through photographs and population data, this publication provides an anthropological view of the Mayan habitants of the Campeche region in southeastern Mexico. It includes essays on the social organization of the communities, and their linguistic diversity.

PUBLISHER
Turner

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 11.5 x 13 in. / 262 pgs / 100 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/31/2014
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2014 p. 200   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788415832379 FLAT40
List Price: $60.00 CAD $79.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

Welcome Amigos to Tijuana

Graffiti on the Border

Published by RM/Conaculta/Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
Text by José Valenzuela Arce, Jorge Sánchez.

This exuberant publication looks at graffiti and street calligraphy in Tijuana, Mexico, focusing on the city’s cross-cultural configuration of national identities and stereotypes, and the effects of the border on the artistic expression and imagination of the communities living on either side.

PUBLISHER
RM/Conaculta/Colegio de la Frontera Norte

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 8.75 x 10.25 in. / 216 pgs / 150 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/31/2013
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2013 p. 196   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788415228257 TRADE
List Price: $50.00 CAD $67.50

AVAILABILITY
Out of stock

Images of Death in Mexican Prints

Published by Editorial RM.
Foreword by Gregory Dechant. Text by Mercurio López Casillas.

Over the past two centuries, Mexican culture has kept up a unique dialogue with the fact of death, rather than defying it as most contemporary cultures are wont to do. Today, Mexico even boasts a Museum of Death (in Aguascalientes), filled with pre-Columbian sculpture and pottery, reproductions of ancient Indian codices depicting human sacrifices, colonial-era artworks, skeletons, artisan’s toys and works by the countless Modern artists who have treated the theme. It is, of course, in Mexico’s arts that the blend of respect and irreverence for death and the afterlife is made most clear. Here, Mercurio López Casillas, expert on nineteenth-century Mexican graphic art and the author of studies of José Guadalupe Posada and Manuel Manilla, surveys the subject from pre-Hispanic times to the comic pages of contemporary Mexican newspapers. López Casillas examines the long tradition of representing death and skeleton figures that leads up to Posada, and traces the influence of this great popular engraver in the work of many other twentieth-century artists, including those of the Taller de Gráfica Popular workshop, like Leopoldo Méndez. Readers of this richly illustrated book will also be fascinated by early colonial examples of calaveras, or skeleton caricatures. Images of Death is a colorful and lively deterrent against our habitual inclination to take the Grim Reaper too seriously. For enthusiasts of Mexican folk art, underground comics, tattoo art, the occult and more.

PUBLISHER
Editorial RM

BOOK FORMAT
Clothbound, 9 x 13.5 in. / 256 pgs / 98 color / 247 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 10/1/2008
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 25   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9789685208895 TRADE
List Price: $65.00 CAD $87.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Phyllis La Farge & Magdalena Caris: Painted Walls of Mexico

Published by Turner/A&R Press.
Foreword by Homero Ardis.

When author Phyllis La Farge and photographer Magdalena Caris recently took a journey from the city of Xalapa in the state of Veracruz to the town of Coatepec, they noted that on the facades of countless public and private buildings, improvised murals had been painted. The wit and exuberance of these wall paintings, whether commercial or simply decorative, suggested an urban visual lingo that could be traced to the ancestral murals of pre-Columbian Mexico, and La Farge and Caris decided that they deserved closer study. Somewhere between a scholarly investigation and a travel book, Painted Walls of Mexico documents these often anonymous interventions. As Homero Aridjis writes in the preface, "Painted Walls is not only an invaluable testimony to this undervalued art which is disappearing from our streets, but honors the unknown artists who, with humor and imagination but without the slightest recognition, convert the streets of their town into an open gallery."

PUBLISHER
Turner/A&R Press

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 8.5 x 9.5 in. / 224 pgs / 175 color / 1 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 5/1/2008
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 195   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9789689056232 TRADE
List Price: $49.00 CAD $65.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

Posada & Manilla: Illustrations for Mexican Fairy Tales

Published by RM.
Text by Mercurio Lopez Casillas.

The second half of the nineteenth century was, famously, a golden age for children's literature-in Mexico as well as in North America and Europe. José Guadalupe Posada (1851-1913) and Manuel Manilla (1839-1895) are the two leading icons of children's illustration in Mexico, and together they developed a huge body of engravings and illustrations for cheap, ephemeral, "penny press" collections of Mexican fairy tales. In the early part of the last century, these fragile publications-once so ubiquitous and loved-received scant attention, until they were brought to a wider audience in the 1930s by the French artist Jean Charlot (who encountered them while visiting Diego Rivera). Published on the 100th anniversary of Posada's death, Illustrations for Mexican Fairy Tales gathers these vibrantly colorful works by both artists for the first time, many of which were done for the famous Mexican penny press publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo. Affordably priced, and with a wealth of color reproductions throughout, this extremely giftworthy collection includes a facsimile reprint of one of Posada's most beautiful and acclaimed booklets as well as an essay by the respected curator, collector and writer Mercurio Lopez Casillas.

PUBLISHER
RM

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 7.5 x 9.25 in. / 112 pgs / illustrated throughout.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/31/2013
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2013 p. 57   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788415118510 TRADE
List Price: $24.95 CAD $33.95

AVAILABILITY
In stock

Frida Kahlo

Published by Editorial RM.
Edited by Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera and Nadia Ugalde.

This richly illustrated exploration of the sources of Frida Kahlo's inspiration in Mexico's popular arts and folk traditions draws illuminating connections between Kahlo's highly personal creations and the aesthetic traditions that infused her early years: votive paintings, nineteenth-century studio photography (including that of her father Guillermo Kahlo), Catholic iconography, revolutionary corridos and the variegated productions of anonymous craftsmen. Readers will recognize Kahlo's centered parts and moustaches in Jose Maria Estrada's portraits and in anonymous Mexican Catholic paintings. They will see her cutaway, heart-on-sleeve self-portraits, in Jose Maria Velasco's nature studies and butterfly taxonomies. And everywhere they will find the tracks of Kahlo's life, particularly the accident that marred her teen years and the marriage that she described as the second major accident of her life--a passionate union with Mexican mural painter Diego Rivera, of which it has been said that "Each regarded the other as Mexico's greatest painter." Kahlo may or may not have been a Surrealist, and she may or may not have been an early variety of feminist artist or have had ideas about what later became feminism, but there is no denying that she is a star. The realist and Symbolist work whose heritage this book traces is known around the world. Texts by Nadia Ugalde and Juan Coronel Rivera also examine related issues such as the influence of Positivism on Frida's education and the roots of her "indigenist" outlook.

PUBLISHER
Editorial RM

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 8.75 x 11.5 in. / 164 pgs / 99 color / 17 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/1/2006
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2006 p. 168   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9789685208574 TRADE
List Price: $50.00 CAD $67.50

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Frida Kahlo: Her Photos

Published by RM.
Edited by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio. Text by James Oles, Horacio Fernandez, Masayo Nonaka, Laura González, Mauricio Ortíz, Gerardo Estrada, Rainer Huhle, Gaby Franger.

The fullness with which Kahlo lived her life is seen best here, and her love for rich experience is reflected back at the reader, full of personality and vitality

PUBLISHER
RM

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 524 pgs / 460 duotone.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 8/31/2010
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2010 p. 89   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788492480753 TRADE
List Price: $50.00 CAD $72.95

AVAILABILITY
In stock

Tomás Casademunt: Death on the Altar

Published by Editorial RM.
Text by Mercurio López Casillas.

There is the Day of the Dead that tourists see, and there is the Day of the Dead that is a lived ritual and a fact of life in Mexico--and it is the latter that the Spanish photojournalist Tomás Casademunt sets out to document in Death on the Altar. Casademunt's approach to this often misunderstood subject focuses on the altars that families assemble to remember and mourn the dead (rather than addressing any activity that attends them), and consequently his images are as humble and generous as the gestures they depict. Many of the shots of these domestic altars are frontal views, for Casademunt never attempts the spectacular shot, nor does he labor to insert himself into the tale. Like an ethnologist, he records a testimony without adding pictorial layers of sentiment or undue piety, so that what we get are intimate, ordinary atmospheres in which the sense of lived ritual is palpable and approachable and into which the viewer's intrusion is minimal. After seven years of explorations in villages in the states of Morelos, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Yucatán, Tlaxcala, Puebla and Guerrero, Tomás Casademunt has produced a group of photographs of great beauty and scale.

PUBLISHER
Editorial RM

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 12.25 x 14.75 in. / 80 pgs / 37 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/1/2009
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2009 p. 158   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9786077515128 TRADE
List Price: $75.00 CAD $90.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Jose Clemente Orozco

Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Text by James Oles.

Ten important works by three muralists at the forefront of Mexico’s social revolution

PUBLISHER
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6 x 8 in. / 48 pgs / 40 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 11/30/2011
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 16   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780870708206 TRADE
List Price: $9.95 CAD $14.95

AVAILABILITY
In stock

Posada: A Century of Skeletons

Published by RM/BBVA.
Text by Juan Villoro, Mercurio López, Helia Bonilla, Montserrat Gali, Rafael Barajas.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the great Mexican satirist

PUBLISHER
RM/BBVA

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 9 x 12 in. / 376 pgs / 968 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/31/2014
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2014 p. 54   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788415118664 TRADE
List Price: $65.00 CAD $87.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Tina Modotti

Published by Silvana Editoriale.
Edited by Dario Cimorelli, Riccardo Costantini. Text by Pino Cacucci, Marianna Figarella, Gianni Pignat.

Photographer, actress, political activist, writer and muse to artists such as Edward Weston and Diego Rivera, Tina Modotti (1896–1942) produced an astonishing body of work during her relatively brief photographic career. She was active for only nine years, from 1923 to 1932, at which point she turned her focus exclusively to political action. A vital participant in the cultural and political ferment of the Mexican Renaissance, Modotti was expelled from Mexico for her Communist affiliations, moved to Moscow, worked in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and eventually returned to Mexico under a pseudonym. Tina Modotti includes 100 of the artist's black-and-white photographs (presented here in exquisite four-color reproductions), and paints a vivid, multifaceted portrait of this extraordinary woman.

PUBLISHER
Silvana Editoriale

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 9 x 11 in. / 160 pgs / 100 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 6/23/2015
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2015 p. 112   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788836628759 TRADE
List Price: $38.00 CAD $50.00

AVAILABILITY
Out of stock

Gloria Cortina: Mexico

Published by Editorial RM.

Consolidating European and modernist influences with Mexico’s arts and crafts heritage

PUBLISHER
Editorial RM

BOOK FORMAT
Slip, Paperback, 10.5 x 15.5 in. / 292 pgs / 173 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/22/2016
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2016 p. 169   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788416282326 TRADE
List Price: $125.00 CAD $170.00

AVAILABILITY
Out of stock

Lola Álvarez Bravo and the Photography of an Era

Published by RM/Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo.
Text by James Oles, Adriana Zavala, Rachael Arauz, Deborah Dorotinsky, Ana Garduño, Karen Cordero, Cecilia Olivares, Cristóbal Andrés Jácome, Javier Vázquez et al.

Lola Álvarez Bravo was a pioneer of photomontage and a leading figure--along with Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, Diego Rivera and others--in Mexico’s post-revolution cultural renaissance. Lola Álvarez Bravo and the Photography of an Era accompanies a touring exhibition presented at the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo in Mexico City, the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Tucson in Arizona, home of Álvarez Bravo’s archives. It gathers 100 photographs and includes her well-known portraits of Kahlo and Rivera as well as photographs only recently discovered in the González Rendón archive. The selection not only demonstrates the great richness of the material contained in the archive, but also throws new light on Álvarez Bravo’s working methods and provides a deeper understanding of the complexity of her career. The photographs convey her uses of Surrealism and photomontage (many examples of which are published here for the first time), as well as her mastery of various genres, from portraits of famous intellectuals and close friends to documentary images of urban and rural poverty in Mexico.

Born Dolores Martinez de Anda to wealthy parents in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, Lola Álvarez Bravo (1990–1993) was abandoned by her mother in her early youth; following her father’s death, in her teen years she was sent to live with the family of her half-brother in Mexico City. It was here that she met the young Manuel Alvarez Bravo, whom she married in 1925. She received her first commission in 1936, photographing the colonial choir stalls of a former church, and in 1951 she opened an art gallery and was the first person to exhibit the paintings of Frida Kahlo.

PUBLISHER
RM/Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 8.25 x 11.75 in. / 156 pgs / 100 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/31/2013
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2013 p. 59   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788415118374 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CAD $60.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available