Recent research has shown the global circulation of Mexican Crucifixes made of caña de maíz

 (corn stalk paste) across the global Spanish Empire. The caña de maíz sculpture is a practice deeply rooted in the indigenous visual culture and its worldwide diffusion subverts a sedimented idea of a passive Colonial Spanish America that was only receiving and not contributing to the art production of the Empire. Pablo Francisco Amador Marrero is the leading scholar in this field and his technical and historical investigations have reveled previously unknown aspects of this production. 

The lecture will be in-person in Humanities Rm 1008 and via Zoom. Event registration required. Please click here to register.

Pablo Francisco Amador Marrero is a permanent researcher of the prestigious Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and he is a member of the Mexican Sistema Nacional de Investigadores. He teaches for the graduate program (MA and PhD) in Art History at the UNAM and for the undergraduate program of the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca. After a BA in Studio Art and Restoration at the Universidad de Granada, he obtained a MA in Art History at the Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, and a PhD at the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. His dissertation titled “Imaginería ligera novohispana en el arte español de los siglos XVI y XVII” (“Portable sculpture from New Spain in the Iberian Peninsula in the 16th and 17th century”).

Marrero is one of the most renowned specialists of American indigenous materials in colonial art. He recently contributed to organization of the Tornaviaje exhibition (“Return Journey: Art of the Americas in Spain”) at the Prado Museum in Madrid, which is the first attempt to show how present and influential art produced in the Americas was in the everyday lives of early modern Spaniards. As a curator, he has worked at a number of exhibitions such as Traza española, ropaje indiano. El Cristo de Telde y la imaginería en caña de maíz (Telde, 2002). Currently, he collaborates with the Museo Amparo, Puebla.

Marrero is a world-renowned restorer, in particular of sculpture made of caña de maiz. In the last two decades he has analyzed, thanks to innovative technologies, a number a works and reveled the material life and afterlife of this indigenous material in the life of Colonial Americas. In 2011, he found an immensely valuable Náhuatl manuscript attached to the body of the Christ of Valverde de Leganés.