Publisher's Synopsis
Hispanic Profiles is an extraordinary contribution not only to The English- and Spanish-speaking cultures but for anyone interested in the great history, literature, music, painting, and architecture of the Hispanic world. Its purpose is to provide the kind of education that has been lacking in the publishing industry, that is, a single volume that offers the reader the depth and scope that is found in this book. Here we will come to know great artists that have been overlooked or have never been seen within the context of a single presentation. The vast panorama presented here of Hispanic culture has been far too long ignored or simply overlooked because of those cultures and artists that have been given unjustifiable preferred status. In the list of the "profiles" presented here, there will be names that practically anyone with a good general education or keen interest in the arts will find familiar. But there will also be many others who will be totally unknown, and yet - through this discussion - the reader will discover that those same unknown artists will be for the most part as great as the familiar ones. Some of the most familiar names will be Cervantes, El Greco, Velazquez, Calderon de la Barca, Murillo, Garcia Lorca, Goya, Ortega y Gasset, Enrique Granados, Victoria de los Angeles, Picasso, Alicia de Larrocha, Jose Clemente Orozco, Frida Kahlo, Joan Miro, Pablo Casals, Placido Domingo, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Pablo de Sarasate. Heitor Villa-Lobos, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Diego Rivera, Octavio Paz, and David Alfaro Siqueiros - the not so familiar. We all have heard of Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales, but how many have heard of Juan Ruiz de Hita? Yet knowledgeable critics consider Juan Ruiz superior to Chaucer who wrote at about the same time. There is not a single playwright in the world superior to Lope de Vega - save for Shakespeare, of course. We have all heard of the character Don Juan and pe
