Desert Hawk Books

 

Aztec Art

Esther Pasztory

 

Paperback
512 pages
75 Color Plates
319 B&W Illustrations
12 maps
9" x 11.75"

Quantity:   $29.95 & S/H  

 

"A beautiful and indispensable survey." - Publishers Weekly.

"The cornerstone of all studies of the art and archaeology of the Aztecs…and indispensable to the study of the art and history of their neighbors." - Latin America in Books.

"The best book on any single area of Pre-Columbian art." - Mary E. Miller, Yale University, author of "The Art of Mesoamerica."

Aztec - the name evokes a fabled New World empire, a towering golden culture with bloody human sacrifices and terrifying idols. This world is re-created in Aztec Art, a magnificent volume that readers will treasure.

     This is the first comprehensive book on Aztec art: eleven chapters illustrated with seventy-five superb color plates and hundreds of photographs, supplemented by maps and diagrams. Temple architecture, majestic stone sculpture carved without metal tools, featherwork and turquoise mosaic, painted books, and sculptures in terra cotta and rare stones - all are here.

     Pasztory has placed these major works of Pre-Columbian art in a historical context, relating them to the reigns of individual rulers, events in Aztec history, and the needs of different social groups from the elite to the farmer. She focuses on the little-known aspects of the aesthetics, poetry and humanity of the Aztecs.

    In 1984 the book received a Special Citation from the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award Committee of the College Art Association.

Esther Pasztory, the Lisa and Bernard Selz Professor in Pre-Columbian Art History and Archaeology at Columbia Univeristy first published Aztec Art with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., in 1983. She is also the author of Teotihuacan: An Experiment in Living, Pre-Columbian Art, and many articles on the art of the Americas ranging from the Andes to North America.