Puebla, also known in Spanish as Puebla de Zaragoza, formally Heroica Puebla de Zaragoza and in colonial times as Puebla de los Ángeles, is the seat of Puebla Municipality, the capital and largest city of the state of Puebla, and the second largest in colonial Mexico and the richest Catholic diocese. A colonial era planned city, it is located in (southern) Central Mexico on the main route between the capital, Mexico City, and Mexico's main Atlantic port, Veracruz—about 100 km (62 mi) east southeast of Mexico City and about 220 km (140 mi) west of Veracruz.
Maiolica is tin-glazed pottery decorated in colours on a white background. Italian maiolica dating from the Renaissance period is the most renowned. When depicting historical and mythical scenes, these works were known as istoriato wares. By the late 15th century, several places, mainly small cities in northern and central Italy, were producing sophisticated pieces for a luxury market in Italy and beyond. In France maiolica developed as faience, in the Netherlands and England as delftware, and in Mexico as talavera. In English the spelling was anglicised to majolica but the pronunciation usually preserved the vowel with an i as in kite.
The Museo Amparo, located in the historic center of Puebla City, is one of the most important historical museums in Mexico. It was inaugurated in 1991 and sponsored by the Amparo Foundation, which was founded in 1979 by Manuel Espinoza Yglesias in honor of his wife.
Azulejo is a form of Portuguese and Spanish painted tin-glazed ceramic tilework. Azulejos are found on the interior and exterior of churches, palaces, ordinary houses, schools, and nowadays, restaurants, bars and even railways or subway stations. They are an ornamental art form, but also had a specific functional capacity like temperature control in homes.
Luis Nishizawa was a Mexican artist known for his landscape work and murals, which often show Japanese and Mexican influence. He began formal training as an artist in 1942 at the height of the Mexican muralism movement but studied other painting styles as well as Japanese art. In addition to painting canvases and murals, including murals made with ceramics, he was a professor of fine arts at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México from which he received an honorary doctorate. The State of Mexico, where he was born, created the Museo Taller Luis Nishizawa to honor and promote his life’s work.
The Franz Mayer Museum, in Mexico City opened in 1986 to house, display and maintain Latin America’s largest collection of decorative arts. The collection was amassed by stockbroker and financial professional Franz Mayer, who collected fine artworks, books, furniture, ceramics, textiles and many other types of decorative items over fifty years of his life. A large portion comes from Europe and Asia but most comes from Mexico itself with items dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Many pieces in the collection are fine handcrafts, such as textiles and Talavera pottery, and they are important because they are items that often did not survive because most did not consider them worth preserving.
Talavera pottery is a Mexican and Spanish pottery tradition from Talavera de la Reina, in Spain. The Mexican pottery is a type of majolica (faience) or tin-glazed earthenware, with a white base glaze typical of the type. It comes from the town of San Pablo del Monte and the cities of Puebla, Atlixco, Cholula, and Tecali, because of the quality of the natural clay found there and the tradition of production which goes back to the 16th century. Much of this pottery was decorated only in blue, but colors such as yellow, black, green, orange and mauve have also been used. Majolica pottery was brought to Mexico by the Spanish in the first century of the colonial period. Production of this ceramic became highly developed in Puebla because of the availability of fine clays and the demand for tiles from the newly established churches and monasteries in the area. The industry had grown sufficiently that by the mid-17th century, standards and guilds had been established which further improved the quality, leading Puebla into what is called the "golden age" of Talavera pottery. Formally, the tradition that developed there is called Talavera Poblana to distinguish it from the similarly named Talavera pottery of Spain. It is a mixture of Italian, Spanish and indigenous ceramic techniques.
Demián Flores Cortés is a contemporary Mexican artist who works in multiple media. He has worked in graphic arts, painting, serigraphy and more producing work which often mixes images from his rural childhood home of Juchitán with those related to modern Mexico City. It also often including the mixture of pop culture images with those iconic of Mexico’s past. Much of Flores’ work has been associated with two artists’ workshops he founded in Oaxaca called La Curtiduría and the Taller Gráfica Actual. This work has included events related to the 2006 uprising in Oaxaca and the restoration of an 18th-century church. His work has been exhibited in Mexico City, Europe, Guatemala and Cuba.
A Tree of Life is a theme of clay sculpture created in central Mexico, especially in the municipality of Metepec, State of Mexico. The image depicted in these sculptures originally was for the teaching of the Biblical story of creation to natives in the early colonial period. The fashioning of the trees in a clay sculpture began in Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla but today the craft is most closely identified with Metepec. Traditionally, these sculptures are supposed to consist of certain biblical images, such as Adam and Eve, but recently there have been trees created with themes completely unrelated to the Bible.
Ceramics in Mexico date back thousands of years before the Pre-Columbian period, when ceramic arts and pottery crafts developed with the first advanced civilizations and cultures of Mesoamerica. With one exception, pre-Hispanic wares were not glazed, but rather burnished and painted with colored fine clay slips. The potter's wheel was unknown as well; pieces were shaped by molding, coiling and other methods.
Ceramics of Jalisco, Mexico has a history that extends far back in the pre Hispanic period, but modern production is the result of techniques introduced by the Spanish during the colonial period and the introduction of high-fire production in the 1950s and 1960s by Jorge Wilmot and Ken Edwards. Today various types of traditional ceramics such as bruñido, canelo and petatillo are still made, along with high fire types like stoneware, with traditional and nontraditional decorative motifs. The two main ceramics centers are Tlaquepaque and Tonalá, with a wide variety of products such as cookware, plates, bowls, piggy banks and many types of figures.
Marcela Lobo Crenier, is a Mexican artist from Mexico City whose work is distinguished by the depiction of everyday objects in strong, bright colors, often using color schemes associated with Mexico. She began her career in 1986 in Cancun doing etching, but moved to Mexico City and into painting by 1991. Most of her work is acrylics on canvas but she is also noted for her work with painting ceramics with Uriarte Talavera. She has also done painting on wood, created ceramics, collages and even shoe decoration and has been exhibited both individually and collectively in Mexico, Europe and the United States.
Erasto Cortés Juárez was a Mexican artist and a founding member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.
Cayetano Corona Gaspariano is a Mexican potter from San Pablo del Monte, Tlaxcala, who is the only authenticated producer of Talavera ceramics in the state.
Cesar Torres Ramírez is a Mexican potter who specialized in the country Talavera pottery tradition. His work has been featured in books such as Cerámica Y Cultura: The Story of Spanish and Mexican Mayólica of the Museum of International Folk Art in New Mexico, in the Grandes Maestros de Arte Popular Mexicano as a “grand master” by the Fomento Cultural Banamex and as one of Mexico’s best artisans in a documentary on Canal Once in Mexico.
Diana Salazar is a Mexican artist, whose career has been split between production and teaching since 1995. She has worked primarily in painting, but also in photography, printing and ceramics. Her work has been recognized with membership into Mexico's Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte as well as grants and awards.
Silvia Barbescu is a Romanian multi-disciplinary artist who has been developing her career in Mexico since 2000, after being invited to the country by the Mexican government. Preferring to work with mixed media and mixed techniques, with images based on nature, her work has been recognized by various awards as well as membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana and the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte in Mexico.
Guanajuato handcrafts and folk art are mostly of European origin although some indigenous work still survives in some communities. The most notable craft is the making of glazed mayolica pottery, followed by handmade traditional toys of various materials, especially a hard paper mache called cartonería. While handcrafts are not a large an industry here as in some other states, it does have several major handcraft markets which sell to tourists and foreign residents. Other handcraft traditions include wrought iron work, tin and glass, wood carving and leather working.
Luis Argudín is a painter and professor of art known for his classical and academic work in an age where this is no longer common. Born in Mexico City, Argudín was educated in England, which has influenced his work. From an exhibition of a self-portrait at the Museo de Arte Moderno when he was eighteen, he has had various individual exhibitions in notable Mexican venues such as the Museo Jose Cuevas and the Palacio de Bellas Artes. He has received grants to be an artist in residence abroad, and professor of art at the Facultad de Arte y Diseño (UNAM) since 1988. The artist is also a published author.
Puebla handcrafts and folk art is handcraft and folk art from the Mexican state of Puebla. The best-known craft of Puebla is Talavera pottery—which is the only mayolica style pottery continuously produced in Mexico since it was introduced in the early colonial period. Other notable handcraft traditions include trees of life from Izúcar de Matamoros and amate (bark) paper made by the very small town of San Pablito in the north of the state. The state also makes glass, Christmas tree ornaments, indigenous textiles, monumental clocks, baskets, and apple cider.
