Pump up Your Heart/Energy!

Hurry to see Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum before it closes tomorrow at the Terra Museum of Art in Chicago.

The show includes more than sixty paintings, photographs, and sculptures that represent many different cultural traditions developed by mostly Spanish-speaking artists who have settled in America.

Deliliah Montoy's photograph Teyolia (Heart/Energy) is one of the intriguing works on view. The central image of Teyolia is the Sacred Heart, a cultural icon for Chicanos that links past and present. For Montoya, it is a magical, mystical image that serves as the common ground between Spanish Christianity and the native Mesoamerican religion.

Source: Virginia Mecklenburg. Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Delilah Montoya, born 1955, Teyolia (Heart/Energy), 1993, collotype on paper, 10 x 8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.