Folk Art of Spain and the Americas: El Alma Del Pueblo

The unique charm of the folk art of Spain and the Americas is celebrated in this book. Encompassing ceramics, paintings and drawings, sculpture, furniture, kitchen tools, jewelry, and votive art, as well as objects used in the performing arts, this wide-ranging book presents the full spectrum of Spanish folk art expression.
The 124 paintings and objects featured here, mostly in color, span almost five hundred years and have been drawn from museums and private collections from every region of Spain as well as Latin America and the United States. The works demonstrate the vibrancy and appeal of objects designed to be purely decorative as well as those fashioned to fill specific needs. They range from wooden bread stamps used to distinguish a family's loaves and intricately crafted model ships offered to saints in thanks for deliverance from dangerous seas to glazed pottery introduced by Spaniards centuries ago and reinterpreted in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and Ecuador.
The text, edited by Marion Oettinger, Jr., with contributions by leading scholars, describes the full range of folk art expression that has been part of Spanish cultural life for hundreds of years and that was transformed into a new aesthetic after arriving in the Americas.