MOMA 1940 Mexican Art

When we speak of pre-Spanish art in Mexico,
it must not be forgotten that we include at least
twenty centuries and that within this period there
necessarily exist many styles that correspond to of a ritual calendar called "tonalpohualli" among 

Proyectos  1950-1970  Federico Cantú - Patrimonio UANL 

different periods in many different cultures. It would be false, for example, to consider pre-Spanish art in Mexico as only the art of the Aztecs or Mayas. This popular conception is as erroneous as would be the idea that all Mediterranean and European art is represented by that of the French or English in the eighteenth century. Aztecs and Mayas were the most important tribes that the Spaniards found at the time of the Conquest, but not even then were they the only great peoples in Mexico, nor did they represent an entirely original art and culture with out antecedents, especially if we consider not only the aboriginal art at the time of the discovery of America, but also go back to a past so distant that it cannot yet be fixed in time. 

Cultural Horizons. The question of Amer ican chronology is a difficult one, so much so that archaeologists speak of what have been called "cultural horizons" rather than of epochs. There is unquestionably a prehistoric horizon to which be long the Folsom arrowheads and other finds of stone implements in the United States. These finds have demonstrated that the American man was contemporaneous with fauna now extinct. It has not been possible to extend this first prehistoric horizon to Mexico, although the great quantity of finds in the southern part of the United States makes it very likely that prehistoric man existed also in Mexico. 

Vitral 1957 Federico Cantú - Misioneros de Guadalupe