Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Painting & Sculpture
The oldest artistic tradition in Nicaragua is ceramics, dating from about 2000 BC with
simple, functional vessels, developing into more sculptural representations by around AD
300. By the time the Spanish arrived, Nicaraguan ceramics were complex, artistic and often
ceremonial, and indicate a pronounced Aztec influence in both design and decoration. Re-
member that it's illegal (and lame) to remove pre-Columbian ceramics from Nicaragua.
Today top-quality ceramics are most famously produced in San Juan de Oriente, which is
known for colorfully painted fine white clays and heavier, carved pots; in Mozonte, near
Ocotal; and at Matagalpa and Jinotega, which are renowned for their black ceramics.
Almost as ancient an art, stone carving probably became popular around AD 800, when
someone realized that the soft volcanic basalt could be shaped with obsidian tools imported
from Mexico and Guatemala. Petroglyphs, usually fairly simple, linear drawings carved in-
to the surface of a stone, are all over the country, and it's easy to arrange tours from Isla de
Ometepe, Granada and Matagalpa.
Stone statues, expressive and figurative, not to mention tall (one tops 5m) are rarer but
also worth seeing; the best museums are in Granada and Juigalpa. Much finer stone statues
are being produced today, using polished, translucent soapstone worked in the backyard
workshops of San Juan de Limay, near Estelí.
Painting apparently arrived with the Spanish (though there's evidence that both statues
and petroglyphs were once more vividly colored), the earliest works being mostly religious
in nature; the best places to see paintings are in León, at the Museo de Arte Sacre and the
Museo de Arte Fundación Ortiz-Guardián. The latter also traces Nicaraguan painting
through to the present, including the Romantic and Impressionistic work of Rodrigo Peñal-
ba, who founded the School of Beaux Arts; and the Praxis Group of the 1960s, led by Ale-
jandro Arostegui and possessed of a heavy-handed social realism, depicting hunger,
poverty and torture.
To Bury Our Fathers
by Sergio Ramírez - one of Nicaragua's most respected writers (and
former Sandinista vice president) - is possibly the best fiction-based portrait of the Somoza
years in print.
In the 1970s Ernesto Cardenal founded an art colony on the Islas Solentiname, an isol-
ated group of islands in the southeast corner of Lago de Nicaragua, today internationally
