Cusco, often spelled Cuzco, is a city in southeastern Peru near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cusco Region and of the Cusco Province. The city is the seventh most populous in Peru and, in 2017, had a population of 428,450. Its elevation is around 3,400 m (11,200 ft).
Ica is a city and the capital of the Department of Ica in southern Peru. While the area was long inhabited by varying cultures of indigenous peoples, the Spanish conquistador Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera claimed its founding in 1563.
Huaco or Guaco is the generic name given in Peru mostly to earthen vessels and other finely made pottery artworks by the indigenous peoples of the Americas found in pre-Columbian sites such as burial locations, sanctuaries, temples and other ancient ruins. Huacos are not mere earthenware but notable pottery specimens linked to ceremonial, religious, artistic or aesthetic uses in central Andean, pre-Columbian civilizations.
The Cupisnique culture was a pre-Columbian indigenous culture that flourished from c. 1500 to 500 BC along what now is Peru's northern Pacific coast. The culture had a distinctive style of adobe clay architecture. Artifacts of the culture share artistic styles and religious symbols with the Chavin culture that arose in the same area at a later date.
Pre-Columbian art refers to the visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, North, Central, and South Americas from at least 13,000 BCE to the European conquests starting in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era continued for a time after these in many places, or had a transitional phase afterwards. Unfortunately, many types of perishable artifacts that were no doubt once very common, such as woven textiles, typically have not been preserved, but Precolumbian monumental sculpture, metalwork in gold, pottery, and painting on ceramics, walls, and rocks have survived more frequently.
Aníbal Villacís was a master painter from Ecuador who used raw earthen materials such as clay and natural pigments to paint on walls and doors throughout his city when he could not afford expensive artist materials. As a teenager, Villacís taught himself drawing and composition by studying and recreating the illustrated ad posters for bullfights in Quito. In 1952, Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, former President of Ecuador, discovered Villacís and offered him a scholarship to study in Paris.
Peruvian art has its origin in the Andean civilizations. These civilizations rose in the territory of modern Peru before the arrival of the Spanish.
The Larco Museum is a privately owned museum of pre-Columbian art, located in the Pueblo Libre District of Lima, Peru. The museum is housed in an 18th-century vice-royal building. It showcases chronological galleries that provide a thorough overview of 5,000 years of Peruvian pre-Columbian history. It is well known for its gallery of pre-Columbian erotic pottery.
Rafael Larco Hoyle, raised at Chiclin, his family's estate, was sent to school in Maryland, United States, at the age of twelve. He later entered Cornell University to study agricultural engineering and by 1923 returned to Peru to work on the family's sugar cane plantation. After spending most of his youth abroad, Larco Hoyle arrived to Peru with the eyes of an outsider. With this foreigner's curiosity he explored the country and discovered an ancient cultural patrimony in the north coast. Larco Hoyle recognized the need to house these objects in a safe place. It was at that point, Larco Hoyle dreamt of a museum, one like he had seen in the United States.
The Machalilla were a prehistoric people in Ecuador, in southern Manabí and the Santa Elena Peninsula. The dates when the culture thrived are uncertain, but are generally agreed to encompass 1500 BCE to 1100 BCE.
The Quimbaya (/kɪmbaɪa/) were a small indigenous group in present day Colombia noted for their gold work characterized by technical accuracy and detailed designs. The majority of the gold work is made in tumbaga alloy, with 30% copper, which imparts meaningful color tonalities to the pieces.
The Museu Barbier-Mueller d'Art Precolombí was the only museum in Europe devoted exclusively to the artistic legacy of the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas. It was located in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, Spain. The museum was established in 1997 to house the pre-Columbian art collection formerly held by its parent museum, the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Genève, Switzerland, which was loaned to the city of Barcelona. In 2012, the museum was unable to reach a purchase agreement with the collection's owner Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller. Subsequently, the world's most important Pre-Columbian collection in private hands was split and auctioned at Southeby's on 22 March 2013.
Pre-Columbian Ecuador included numerous indigenous cultures, who thrived for thousands of years before the ascent of the Incan Empire. Las Vegas culture of coastal Ecuador is one of the oldest cultures in the Americas. The Valdivia culture in the Pacific coast region is a well-known early Ecuadorian culture. Ancient Valdivian artifacts from as early as 3500 BC have been found along the coast north of the Guayas Province in the modern city of Santa Elena.
Museo de Arte Precolombino (Spanish) or Pre-Columbian Art Museum (English) forms the name or part of the name of several specific institutions devoted to collections of pre-Columbian art and artefacts. As such, either of these may refer to:
The Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art is an art museum dedicated to the study and display of pre-Columbian artworks and artifacts from Central and South America. The museum is located in the city centre of Santiago, the capital of Chile. The museum was founded by the Chilean architect and antiquities collector Sergio Larraín García-Moreno, who had sought premises for the display and preservation of his private collection of pre-Columbian artefacts acquired over the course of nearly fifty years. With the support of Santiago's municipal government at the time, García-Moreno secured the building and established the museum's curatorial institution. The museum first opened in December 1981 and was closed from 2011 to 2013 for renovation.
The Pre-Columbian Gold Museum is a museum in San José, Costa Rica. It is located in a subterranean building underneath the "Plaza de la Cultura" and is owned and curated by the Banco Central de Costa Rica. The museum has an archaeological collection of 3,567 Pre-Columbian artifacts made up of 1,922 ceramic pieces, 1,586 gold objects, 46 stone objects, 4 jade, and 9 glass or bead objects. The gold collection dates from 300 to 400 BC to 1550 AD. The collection includes animal figurines, amulets, earrings, erotic statuettes and several dioramas including El Guerrero, a life sized gold warrior figure adorned with gold ornaments in a glass case and a detailed scale model of a Pre-Columbian village. There is also a replica of a pre-Columbian grave containing 88 gold objects which was unearthed on a banana plantation in southeastern Costa Rica in the 1950s. In Costa Rican history, gold was considered a symbol of authority and the items are testament to the craftmanship of the Pre-Columbian period.
The Gold Museum of Peru and Weapons of the World is a Peruvian museum, located in Lima.
The cuchimilco figures are unglazed terracotta figurines, created between 1200 and 1450 AD by the Chancay culture, which developed in the latter part of the Inca Empire. Ceramic guardian figures were important in Chancay culture. They normally come in pairs of male and female figures, with stocky, almost triangular shaped bodies and upraised arms. The figures are similar but have different painted decoration to indicate gender differences in dress. The exact function of these figures is unknown, but it is thought that they may have acted as guardians to the tombs of the Chancay people, or as companions in the afterlife.
Kukuli Velarde is a Peruvian artist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She specializes in painting and ceramic sculptures made out of clay and terra-cotta. Velarde focuses on the themes of gender and the repercussions of colonization on Latin American history, with a particular interest in Peru. Her ceramics consist of unusual body positions, childlike faces, and works that have been molded from her own face as well.
The Museum of Pre-Columbian and Indigenous Art is an ethnographic museum located in Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo, Uruguay, dedicated to the indigenous cultures of different parts of Latin America.
