This
volume addresses and expands the role of the artist in colonial Latin American
society, featuring essays by specialists in the field that consider the ways
society conceived of artists and the ways artists defined themselves. Broadening
the range of ways that creativity can be understood, contributors show that
artists functioned as political figures, activists, agents in commerce,
definers of a canon, and revolutionaries.

Chapters
provide studies of artists in Peru, Mexico, and Cuba between the
sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Instead of adopting the paradigm of individuals
working alone to chart new artistic paths, contributors focus on human
relationships, collaborations, and exchanges. The volume offers new
perspectives on colonial artworks, some well known and others previously
overlooked, including discussions of manuscript painting, featherwork, oil
painting, sculpture, and mural painting.

Most
notably, the volume examines attitudes and policies related to race and
ethnicity, exploring various ethnoracial dynamics of artists within their
social contexts. Through
a decolonial lens not often used in the art history of the era and region,
Collective Creativity and Artistic Agency in Colonial
Latin America
examines artists' engagement in society and their impact within it.

Publication of this work made possible
by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the
National Endowment for the Humanities.