Hispanic Art in the United States: Thirty Contemporary Painters and Sculptors

Wrestling openly with problems of identity and alienation, Hispanic artists in the United States bring virtuoso skill, exuberant energy, social awareness and subversive humor to their work. Painters and sculptors who came here from Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Central and South America work in a spectrum of mediums and styles, from surrealist fantasies to polychrome carvings. This important volume, which coincides with a traveling exhibition, makes visible a major body of art, a movement, that has been almost entirely ignored by the mainstream art establishment. Highlights include Martain Ramirez's remarkable colored drawings, which hover between sanity and madness; Carlos Almaraz's jarring, flamboyant nightmare visions; Felipe Archuleta's timeless animal sculptures. Paz's essay captures the Hispanic-American artist's ""double sense'' of participation and separation. (June 29)