National Portrait Gallery

Madre Maria Enuncarnación Regalado
Unidentified artist (Quinto school)
Monasterio de la Concepcióne, Quinto, Ecuador

Upcoming exhibition venue:

San Antonio Museum of Art
San Antonio, Texas
February 4, 2006—April 30, 2006

"Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits" is a groundbreaking exhibition exploring Latin American art and history through portraiture. Including more than one hundred painted and sculpted portraits from seventy-six leading museums and private collectors in Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the United States, this exhibition is the first to consider the rich traditions of portraiture in Latin America from a multinational point of view.

This project, and all related national and local programs and publications, are made possible by Ford Motor Company Fund.

Consisting of five sections, "Retratos" begins with works from the Moche and Maya cultures to underscore the fact that portraiture existed in Latin America before the arrival of Europeans. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century portraits from the viceregal, or colonial, period (1492–1810) show the era’s secular and religious leaders, and demonstrate the transformation and adaptation of European portrait models in various colonies. This section also includes the first of several representations of crowned nuns, a portrait genre that began in the mid-eighteenth century and had a hundred-year history.

In the nineteenth century, a time when countries in the Americas established their independence from European rulers, the portraits portray the new secular and social leaders of the time, most of whom, like Simón Bolívar, were native-born. Many of these portraits were undertaken by indigenous artists, such as Peruvian-born José Gil de Castro (1785–1843), whose career took place mainly in Chile, and Mexican José María Estrada (c. 1810–c. 1862). The nineteenth century is complex, however, and paradox reigns. European stylistic traditions were not wholly ignored: by the middle of the century, numerous native-trained painters journeyed to Europe, particularly Paris, to complete their training and make their reputation by participating in juried exhibitions there.

Portraits made during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century underscore both the internationalism of Latin American art as well as its strong nationalist impulses. Contemporary portraits (1980–present), featured in the last section of the exhibition, demonstrate the vitality of portraiture today in the work of those living in Latin America and those from Latin America currently residing in the United States.

"Retratos" is jointly curated by Carolyn Kinder Carr and Miguel Bretos of the National Portrait Gallery; Marion Oettinger Jr. of the San Antonio Museum of Art; and Fatima Bercht of El Museo del Barrio in New York City. A 300-page, fully illustrated catalogue published by Yale University Press, containing essays by a dozen scholars in the field, accompanies the exhibition.

This exhibition is organized by the National Portrait Gallery, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and El Museo del Barrio.

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