July 14, 2002

By JOSHUA BROCKMAN

SANTA FE, N.M. — This city’s Spanish colonial legacy has hardly been hidden. The city’s centerpiece is the Palace of the Governors on the downtown plaza. Built by the Spanish in 1610 as government headquarters, it is the oldest continually occupied public building in the United States.

The Spanish imprint is also in the landscape, architecture, cuisine and art. It is in people’s blood (42 percent of the state’s residents are Hispanic or Latino.)

Yet in a state with several long-standing museums devoted to indigenous culture, there has been no art museum devoted to the Spanish colonial influence — until now. The Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, which opens next Sunday, is the first institution in the United States dedicated to art and artifacts from the colonial era or directly influenced by it. And within its collections is the story of a vast empire — its vibrant culture and religious devotion, as well as its violent conquests.

“The Hispanic arts were eclipsed or overshadowed by the Native American arts in scholarship, in the museums, as well as in private collections,” said Donna Pierce, the museum’s chief curator. In the early 20th century, “Native American arts tended to be looked at by anthropologists and archaeologists who did not have an interest in the Hispanic arts. At that time, art historians were looking at neither. It was only after World War II that art historians, interestingly many of the Europeans, started to look at the Spanish colonial arts of the Southwest and by extension of Latin America as well.”

“St. James, Moorslayer,” by Molleno, depicts the brutality of Spanish colonialism. Jack Parsons/Museum of Spanish Colonial Art.

The museum’s collection includes more than 3,000 artifacts that span six centuries — from the Middle Ages to the 21st century — of Hispanic culture in North and South America, Europe and Asia. At its core are devotional and ritual representations of saints, known as santos. The saints are painted on small wooden panels or larger altarpieces (retablos) or carved in three-dimensional wooden figures (bultos). The collection also includes reliquaries, crucifixes and straw appliqué, as well as jewelry, textiles, tinwork and furniture.

The inaugural exhibition, “Conexiones: Connections in Spanish Colonial Art,” strives to place the culture of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado in a global context. Works from across the Spanish empire, including Spain, Mexico, Brazil and the Philippines, influenced New Mexico artisans. Over time they improvised with local materials and techniques, establishing their own styles.

The Spanish colonial era began in the early 16th century, with the conquest of Mexico, but it was not until a 1598 expedition led by Juan de Oñate that Spain formalized its claim on New Mexico. Trading routes spread, and after colonizing the Philippines in 1565, Spain established a Pacific Ocean shipping route, linking Asia and Mexico. Everything from spices to Chinese porcelain made its way to Mexico and then onto mule trains bound for New Mexico — a 1,500-mile trade route known as the Camino Real, according to the exhibition.

In New Mexico, however, the market for santos remained local; the sacred objects were used either for personal devotion or public devotion in churches, Ms. Pierce said. These pieces often depicted saints with enlarged heads, high cheekbones and lanky bodies, all to capture an observer who would have gazed up at the work, placed on an altar or wall.

The Spanish artist Bernardo Miera y Pacheco (1714-1785) is the first known New Mexican santero, who established a color aesthetic still practiced today. While artists outside of New Mexico relied on oil paints and gold leaf exclusively, he added local mineral and vegetable pigments to his palette. Indians from the Zuni Pueblo taught him how to dig for azurite and use it in his paints. Art historians believe that he may have used the color, Zuni blue, in his 1780 retablo “St. Raphael.” Miera y Pacheco is also credited with creating one of New Mexico’s Spanish colonial treasures: a carved-stone altar screen from 1761, which is housed in Santa Fe’s Cristo Rey Church, not far from the museum.

A range of works in the exhibit, from retablos to textiles, point to the worldwide influences on New Mexican artistry. Sgrafitto is an Italian technique in which the artist scratches through an opaque layer to create a decorative pattern. The New Mexican santero Pedro Antonio Fresquís (1749-1831) used sgrafitto to adorn the outer edges of “Crucifixion,” a striking white-on-black retablo. The floral motifs in this and other works by Fresquís likely emerged from his study of Mexican rococo prints, which incorporated patterns found in Asian weavings. Similarly, a late-18th- or early-19th-century New Mexican embroidered wool bed covering was woven with floral elements, including seven large C-scroll patterns, which resemble cotton or calico fabrics imported to New Mexico from East India. The wool may also have been crafted using local dye techniques from Pueblo Indians.

While much of the museum’s devotional art depicts images of Jesus, Mary or patron saints, there is also a dark side to some of the imagery. Between the 15th and 16th centuries, as part of Spain’s quest to enrich its coffers and to proselytize, the empire expelled Jews and Muslims from Spain, conquered indigenous peoples of Latin America and subjugated Indians in New Mexico.

The museum holds an early 19th-century retablo of “St. James, Moorslayer” by Molleno, an artist who worked in the Chimayó area. His work depicts the saint holding a cross atop his horse as he tramples Moors underneath. The loose brush strokes convey a chilling portrait — a brutal scene rendered with whimsy.

In 1821, Mexico gained its independence and the Spanish colonial era came to a close. The birth of the Santa Fe Trail redirected trade routes along an East-West axis, bringing in new resources for artists. Indeed, when José de Gracia Gonzales created his “Crucifixion With Our Lady of Sorrows and St. John the Evangelist” (1860-1875), he built the cross from a packing box that had come across the Santa Fe Trail from St. Louis.

The museum also holds works from many contemporary artists who have continued the tradition of religious iconography. Felix López’s 1993 bulto “Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe” (“Our Lady of Guadalupe”) depicts Mary, dressed in a cloak with stars, perched on a crescent moon. But instead of using paint to create the stars, Mr. López, 60, used straw appliqué. The technique, with its characteristic floral and geometric designs, evolved from inlaid woodwork in Spain and Mexico and became popular in New Mexico in the late 18th and 19th centuries. In lieu of expensive woods, ivory and shell, which were not readily available in New Mexico, artists used straw and cornhusk.

Other artists use the Spanish colonial traditions as a point of departure. For instance, the sculptor Luis Tapia, 52, creates work that resembles Red Grooms constructions.

“What happened 200 years ago is important — that’s our foundation,” Mr. Tapia said. “But I want to speak more about today.” His sculpture “Sangre de Cristo” (1992) depicts Christ’s passion on the cross and was inspired by a biblical story that the chosen people will sit at the base of the mountains, Mr. Tapia said. Christ’s right hand is in a blessing gesture, bleeding into a chalice with a crown of thorns nailed around the lip. Blood overflows onto the Sangre de Cristo mountain range painted on the base.

Although the museum is new, its collection has been decades in the making, said Stuart A. Ashman, the executive director. It started in 1928, three years after the founding of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, a network of collectors and connoisseurs who wanted to preserve traditional Hispanic art and keep it in New Mexico. Much of the museum’s collection was bequeathed by members of the society.

The art is housed in a 1930 building that is part of the Laboratory of Anthropology, designed by the architect John Gaw Meem, who is credited with refining Spanish Pueblo revival architecture. The laboratory, which blends design from both Hispanic and Indian cultures, now houses the museum in the former director’s residence, while the anthropology center remains next door. The museum has only 3,400 square feet of exhibition space, and the fireplaces, built-in benches and handmade doors create an intimate setting.

While it has taken nearly 75 years for the collection to find a permanent home, the museum’s presence solidifies the connection between generations of artists who share certain aesthetic roots and insures that Spanish colonial art no longer remains in the shadows.

Read original article, which appeared in Arts & Lesiure, Section 2, on pgs. 31, 33.

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