About this item
Following the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848) , lands that had for centuries belonged to New Spain, and later to Mexico, were transformed into the thirty-first state in the United States. This process was facilitated by visual artists, who forged distinct pictorial motifs and symbols to establish the state's new identity. This collective cultural inheritance of the Spanish and Mexican periods forms a central current of California history but has been only sparingly studied by cultural and art historians. California Mexicana focuses for the first time on the range and vitality of artistic traditions growing out of the unique amalgam of Mexican and American culture that evolved in Southern California from 1820 through 1930. A study of these early regional manifestations provides the essential matrix out of which emerge later art and cultural issues.
About the Author
Katherine Manthorne, a specialist in modern art of the Americas, earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Prior to joining the faculty at the Graduate Center of City University of New York she was Director of the Research Center at Smithsonian's American Art Museum. Her fellowships include Tyson Scholarship at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Terra Foundation Professor, Free University of Berlin; and Senior Fulbright Research Fellow, University of Venice. Her scholarship had long focused on landscape and hemispheric dimensions of American art, beginning with Tropical Renaissance. North American Artists Exploring Latin America, 1839-1879 (1989) and continuing in California Mexicana: Missions to Murals, 1820 to 1930 (2017) . Eager to better highlight the role of women within the visual culture of the Americas, her book Film and Modern American Art: The Dialogue between Cinema and Painting (Routledge, available in paperback, 2020) included a chapter on women of the silent era. Two new books continue that focus: Women in the Dark: American Female Photographers 1850-1900 (Schiffer Publishing, 2020) and Restless Enterprise: The Art and Life of Eliza Pratt Greatorex (U. of California Press, 2020) . She lives in NYC with her husband visual artist and author James Lancel McElhinney and their cat Maeve.
