Before América - Original Sources in Modern Culture

From artifacts to the avant-garde: the “Amerindian” visual aesthetic presented in a colossal and copiously illustrated catalog

By Manuel Fontán del Junco, editor, and María Toledo Gutiérrez, editor 

After Europeans christened two sweeping continents with hundreds of individual cultures and traditions “America,” the visual culture of the “New World” became filled with reinterpretations of ancient civilizations from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Before América turns back the clock to examine the formation of Americanist identity from Indigenous cultures, beginning with the archeological expeditions of the 18th and 19th centuries and ending with contemporary media and popular culture. With a striking graphic cover, the book is a glorious compilation of over 800 illustrations showcasing the “Amerindian” paradigm across mediums and decades: textiles, jewelry, furniture, printed books, playing cards, movie posters, Aztec-themed hotels, and contemporary artwork by Josef and Anni Albers, Cecilia Vicuña and Henry Moore. Whether subtle motifs or plain pastiches, all these examples appropriate a simulacrum of Indigenous visual culture, now full of new and fascinating meanings.

Manuel Fontán del Junco became Director of Museums and Exhibitions at the Fundación Juan March in Madrid, Spain and its two museums in 2006. Besides his publications, translations, and lectures, he has conceived, directed, and in many cases curated more than fifty exhibitions including Tarsila do Amaral [2009]; Cold America: Geometrical Abstraction in Latin America (2011); Aleksandr Deineka 1899–1969; An Avant-Garde for the Proletariat (2011); Sound Art in Spain 1961-2016 (2016); and The Unseen: From Informalist Painting to the Postwar Photobook 1945-1965 (2016). At the Clark, he will work on a curatorial research project  (working title: “The Genealogies of Modern Art, or Art History as Visual Art”) that will result in an exhibition in 2018 focused on Alfred H. Barr’s famous chart for his 1935 Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition.

Fundación Juan March, 2024, hardcover, 9.6 x 12.1 inches, 632 pages.