Assistant Professor of Art History, La Salle University

“Resonating Casta within Costumbrismo”

In colonial Mexico, the miscegenation of the indigenous, African and European populations produced diverse offspring that challenged racial and ethnic purity and disrupted social stability. During this period and the post-Independence era, the visual arts played a critical role in depicting how race was understood scientifically and culturally. This lecture will examine the racialized social spaces represented in eighteenth-century casta and nineteenth-century costumbrista painting and explore the resonances between the two genres.