18 - Architecture and art

Summary

Among the pioneers in writing the history of the art and architecture of colonial Spanish America, the prominent figures in Mexico were Manuel Romero de Terreros, with his Historia sintética del arte colonialx (Mexico, D.F., 1922), and Manuel Toussaint, author of the classic Arte colonial en México, 2nd ed. (Mexico, D.F., 1962); Eng. trans. Colonial Art in Mexico, (Austin, Tex., 1967). A comparable role was played in Peru by the architect Emilio Harth-terré, whose numerous articles have been collected into one volume: Perú: Monumentos históricos y arqueologicos (Mexico, D.F., 1975). See also Héctor Velarde, Arquitectura peruana (Mexico, D.F., 1946) for a number of interesting points of view. In Argentina there were three early specialists: Angel Guido, Martín S. Noel and Miguel Solá. Guido was a theorist who made his name with Eurindia en el arte hispanoamericano (Santa Fe, Arg., 1930). Noel, architect, theorist – see his Teoría histórica de la arquitectura virreinal (Buenos Aires, 1932) – and connoisseur, was most importantly the editor of a series of studies entitled Documentos de arte colonial sudamericano, published in Buenos Aires between 1943 and 1957 by the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes. The most comprehensive and coherent work was Miguel Solá, Historia del arte hispanoamericano (Barcelona, 1935). The major work, however, was to be that undertaken by a Spanish historian, Diego Angulo Iñíguez, the chief author of a monumental Historia del arte hispanoamericano, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1945–56), in which he was assisted by another Spaniard, Enrique Marco Dorta, and by the Argentine architect Mario José Buschiazzo.