The Europeans who arrived in the Americas as part of Spain’s colonial project imposed their own preferred styles and media—easel painting and polychrome sculpture in particular—on societies whose artistic traditions had long privileged textiles, ceramics, and metallurgy. The Indigenous artists they trained were expected to adopt these media and to master European-style naturalism and Catholic iconography. In the process, they created artworks that were strikingly original and deeply specific to their place of origin.
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