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(b Philadelphia, May 16, 1962).

American painter. She studied at Tyler School of Arts, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, where she was awarded her BFA in 1984, and completed her MFA in 1996 at Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT. Her paintings address the female body and notions of internalized misogyny, both in the artist and the viewer. Her Bad Baby I (1991; see A. America, lxxxi, June 1993, p. 103) shows a depersonalised and sexualised child figure, painted in hot lollipop colours. Making a link between the visual pleasures of modernist aesthetics and the scopophilic instincts of pornography, Yuskavage’s paintings present figures undergoing a form of violation (cultural as well as sexual and visual) in front of an implicated viewer. She often uses misogonystic forms well-worn through their cultural usage to show the objectification within the familiar, as in Blond, Brunette and Redhead (1995; see R. Brooks article). Using exaggerated naked figures with gigantic breasts and buttocks, they offer no resistance to visual mastery by the viewer, but actively encourage it. This over-visibility is taken to a monstrous height in ...

(b Bialystok, June 14, 1924).

Mexican architect of Polish birth. He studied at the Escuela de Arquitectura at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, graduating in 1949. In his early years he produced a large number of outstanding residential buildings and offices in Mexico City, making rigorous use of the International style and demonstrating an impeccable handling of contemporary design, techniques and materials. Also notable from this period was the Centro Cívico Cinco de Mayo (1962), Puebla, on which he collaborated with Guillermo Rossel. In 1968 Zabludovsky began working in collaboration with Teodoro González de León, although the two architects continued to work on some projects individually and retained their separate stylistic identities. Their collaborative work was remarkable for its quality and maturity, establishing functional and formal solutions that were later widely imitated. Clear examples of their characteristic proposals for constructions of massive, linear volume are the Delegación Cuauhtémoc (1972–3; with Jaime Ortiz Monasterio (...

City in Mexico. Capital of the state of the same name in the central highlands of Mexico, it is c. 250 km north-east of Guadalajara and has a population of c. 150,000. The city was established in 1546 and became the most important silver-mining centre of colonial Mexico. The uneven terrain (it is situated in a ravine) and its initial quick growth resulted in an irregular but picturesque plan. Conservation efforts have preserved the city’s colonial scale and many colonial buildings in the local reddish limestone. A late 18th-century chapel dedicated to the Virgin crowns the Cerro de la Bufa, the hill that dominates the city. The cathedral was constructed as the parish church of La Asunción (begun 1612; completed 1752), integrating parts of the chapels of the Miraculous Crucified Christ and of the Virgin to produce a spacious three-aisled church; the architect was probably Miguel Sánchez Pacheco and, at the end, ...

(Augusto )

(b Panama City, Feb 5, 1930).

Panamanian printmaker and painter, active in Spain. He studied under Juan Manuel Cedeño at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura in Panama City and from 1953 to 1959 at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. In 1961 he moved to Madrid, where he began his important work at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Zachrisson’s etchings, drypoints, lithographs and woodcuts tell stories, mock tradition and criticize society, encompassing subjects as varied as the circus and the myth of Icarus. In works such as the Death of Chimbombó (1963; New York, MOMA) he depicts life with humour and satire in a cruel and even tragic vision. His fantastic world is peopled by an entourage of monsters, witches and grotesque figures drawn from Panamanian urban folklore, Spanish literature, classical mythology and personal experiences. Zachrisson’s paintings, produced since the 1970s, tend to be less detailed than his etchings but are equally biting in their use of irony, secual explicitness and references to his Panamanian background. Formally, his paintings emphasize colour and design over volume, with flat intense hues, hard edges and nearly invisible brushstrokes, as in ...

Pre-Columbian site around 4 km from the modern town of Huehuetenango in Guatemala. It flourished as a Highland Maya ceremonial and administrative centre c. ad 600–1525. The ruins of Zaculeu are high in the mountains of western Guatemala, in a relatively flat valley with mountains rising on all sides. Archaeological evidence shows that the site was occupied continuously from the Early Classic period (c. ad 250–c. 600) until its conquest by the Spaniards under the leadership of Gonzalo de Alvarado in 1525. At that time, the site was the Mam Maya capital, although it was evidently subjected to many outside influences and perhaps even conquest by neighbouring tribes during its long history. Most of what is known about Zaculeu is based on the excavations and restorations carried out in 1946–9 under the auspices of the Guatemalan Instituto de Arqueología e Historia. During this time nearly all the main structures were excavated and partly restored, numerous burials uncovered, and collections of ceramics and other artefacts made. Most of these artefacts are in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología in Guatemala City, and there is a small collection in the site museum....

(b Elizabeth, NJ, May 24, 1935).

American painter. He received a BA from the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art in 1958, and he subsequently moved to New York to work as a commercial artist. He turned to painting in response to his exposure to Abstract Expressionism , and he later developed a style based on Colour field painting of the 1950s. He became widely known, however, as an exponent of Pattern and Decoration art after he began introducing floral motifs into his paintings in 1974. He was also central in organizing a group of artists with a shared interest in decorative painting as an alternative to the austerity of minimalism and the intellectualism of conceptual art that included Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner , Kim MacConnel (b 1946) and Miriam Schapiro .

Like many of the other Pattern and Decoration painters of the 1970s, Zakanitch arrived at his approach after concluding that reductionism of modernist art had exhausted itself, and in response he began applying floral patterns to the compositional grids of his abstract paintings. He developed this approach partly through his encounter with critics and other artists, particularly during his time teaching at the University of California, San Diego, in ...

(b. Ventura, California, 1942).

American calligrapher. Having converted to Islam in the 1960s while still a teenager, he studied Islamic calligraphy, training with A. S. Ali Nour in Tangier, Morocco, and later studying at the British Museum in London. In the 1980s he felt his work had reached a plateau and decided to re-learn the art of calligraphy in the Ottoman style. Hence in 1984 he went to Istanbul to train with the Turkish calligraphers Hasan Çelebi and Ali Alparslan at the Research Center for Islamic History, Art, and Culture (IRCICA), where he was tutored in thuluth, naskh and nasta‛līq scripts. In 1997 he became the first American to receive an icazet or diploma from IRCICA for his abilities as a calligrapher. His calligraphic works are executed within meticulously observed traditional modes, reflected also in his insistence on making his own reed and bamboo pens. His works typically reflect the traditions of the Ottoman masters of the 19th century, with illuminations in the Turkish Baroque style. A pioneer in the field of Islamic calligraphy in the USA, his works have been exhibited widely in the USA and the Middle East. He has also revived the ancient art of making astrolabes, and examples of this aspect of his work are held in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the USA. Based for many years in Arlington, Virginia, in ...

(b Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, Jan 12, 1908; d Morelia, Jan 19, 2003).

Mexican painter, printmaker and teacher. He studied in Mexico City at the Academia de San Carlos (1924–9) and at the Escuela de Grabado y Talla Directa. In 1930 he founded the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura in Taxco. He was also a member of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios and an early member in 1937 of the Taller de Gráfica Popular, taking part in their group exhibitions and publications until 1950. From 1951 he was director of the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura in Morelia, Michoacán. In addition to his career as a teacher he was active politically. He practised primarily as a printmaker with a clear and precise draughtsmanship; he published, for example, a portfolio of eight lithographs, Estampas de Yucatán (1945), after travelling through the area for several months. He was also involved with the muralist movement in Mexico, and in 1930...

American centre of ceramics production. In 1875 the American Encaustic Tile Factory was founded in Zanesville, OH, and in 1888 Samuel A. Weller moved his pottery from nearby Fultenham. Weller was followed by other potteries, such as the Roseville Pottery Company (1892) and in 1895 Weller bought the ...

(b São Paulo, 1934).

Brazilian architect and teacher. He graduated in 1959 from the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the University of São Paulo, where he received a PhD in 1972. He belonged to the third generation of modern architects in Brazil, benefiting from the opportunities presented by rapid industrialization, the founding of Brasília and the intensive urbanization of the cities. In 1964 he became Professor of Planning at the University of São Paulo, and his preoccupation with social concerns was reflected in his approach to planning for housing, education and health in the city’s suburbs. From this experience came a variety of experiments with timber, steel, reinforced concrete and techniques that combine industrial components with the abundant unskilled labour available in the large cities. In 1968 he won a competition for the construction of a maternity hospital at Vila Nova Cachoeirinha, on the outskirts of São Paulo, on which he worked for three years with a large interdisciplinary team and with the local population. He also designed a number of primary schools and banks, such as the Banco do Estado de São Paulo (...

(b ?1710–20; d ?1773).

Peruvian painter. He was one of the last artists of the Cuzco school, whose members followed and repeated the formulae developed by Diego Quispe Tito. Though not outstandingly original, he is notable for the quantity of his production and commissions: between 1748 and 1764 he painted at least 200 works. His level of output was probably due to his use of numerous apprentices, such as Cipriano Toledo y Gutiérrez (fl 1762–73), Ignacio Chacón (fl 1763–80), and Antonio Vilca (fl 1778–?1803). During the 18th century Zapata and the other members of the Cuzco school started producing works incorporating highly formal, idealized figures based on the engravings that had long been supplied to artists by the religious orders of Cuzco. The indigenous artists consequently lost all contact with the Spanish realist school, a process to which Zapata contributed. However, while using European prints as a guide, in many of his pictures there are various non-European features: elegant creoles, black slaves, and such events as the epidemic of ...

Pre-Columbian ceremonial site in central Veracruz, Mexico. It flourished c. ad 500–c. 800 and is notable for the large ceramic figures found there and for one of the few known temples in Mesoamerica dedicated to the god of the underworld. Zapotal has been plundered and some of its sculptures taken abroad; two seated female figures (Brussels, Mus. Royaux A. & Hist.; St Louis, MO, A. Mus.) are probably from Zapotal. Excavations at the site have been carried out by the Universidad Veracruzana since 1971, and most of the artefacts unearthed are in the Universidad Veracruzana, Museo de Antropología, Jalapa.

The site consists of mounds orientated along a north–south axis, two of which measure 10 m and 15 m in height. An offering of numerous terracotta figures and vessels, which had been broken for ritual purposes, was discovered in an artificial platform known as Mound 2 (75×35×4 m). Over 100 burials have also been found. Some contained ‘smiling face’ clay figurines, a type found only in the Veracruz region, and an ossuary composed of a column of 82 skulls and bones was also unearthed. The skeletal remains from tombs bear evidence of human sacrifices....

Pre-Columbian people and stylistic tradition in the Oaxaca region of Mexico. These people’s name for themselves was Peni-Zaa (‘real people’), but the term Zapotec (‘people of the sweet fruit’) is an Aztec improvisation based on the rough phonetic similarity of zaa and Aztec tsa. There is no simple Zapotec art style, rather an orderly uninterrupted sequence of styles stretching from c. 500 bc to c. ad 800. After 600 bc culture was centred around the hilltop city of Monte Albán. The Zapotec and Mixtec peoples are still the most numerous of the Indian peoples in Oaxaca: the Zapotecs dominate the eastern portion of the state, the Mixtecs the western. Linguistic research, however, suggests that Zapotec inhabitants of the region could date back to c. 4500 bc.

From 1931 the Mexican scholar Alfonso Caso began exploring Monte Albán and the Oaxaca Valley; his work remains a primary source for the study of Zapotec–Mixtec culture. The centuries of isolation essential to a rare case of homogeneous development like that of the Zapotec people of Monte Albán were favoured by topography: range after range of mountains on every side made communication with the central valleys of Oaxaca, at whose confluence Monte Albán rises, laborious and slow. Settled agricultural villages appeared in the valleys, as elsewhere in Mesoamerica, by about ...

(Thomas)

(b Beaufort County, SC, Oct 8, 1814; d Social Circle, GA, Dec 13, 1892).

American daguerreotypist. He specialized in studio portraits but is now known for his images of enslaved men and women intended to support an early theory of race formation. He became an itinerant daguerreotypist in the early 1840s and in 1846, at the request of local citizens, opened a photographic portrait studio in Columbia, SC, the first establishment of its kind in that city. The success of his business as a portrait photographer is apparent from period advertisements, in which he touts the latest techniques and materials, and from the regular appearance of his name in the editorials of photographic trade journals. His customers considered him to be ‘the best artist in the up country’ (Louis Foster Perrin to his sister, 16 Oct 1856, James Rion McKissick Collection, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina). Success enabled him to become a respectable member of his community, joining the Freemasons and owning slaves....

( Heinrich )

(b Braunsdorf, Jan 11, 1926).

Canadian architect of German birth. He studied at the Staatliche Bauhaus, Weimar (1948), and graduated in engineering and architecture from the Technische Hochschule, University of Karlsruhe, in 1949. He began his career as a designer for the architectural firm of Eiermann & Lindner, Karlsruhe. In 1951 Zeidler emigrated to Canada and worked for Blackwell & Craig of Peterborough, Ontario, becoming a partner in the firm in 1954. He taught modern architectural design at the University of Toronto (1953–5; Adjunct Professor from 1984). He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1956. In 1962 Zeidler moved the practice from Peterborough to Toronto, where it evolved as Craig, Zeidler & Strong (1963–75), and later as the Zeidler Partnership/Architects (1975–80). In 1980, when Zeidler joined with new partner Alfred C. Roberts (b 1931), the name was changed again to the Zeidler Roberts Partnership/Architects. Zeidler was best known for designing such megastructures as the McMaster Health Sciences Centre in Hamilton (completed ...

[née Stricker, Éva Amália; Weissburg, Mrs Alexander]

(b Budapest, Nov 13, 1906; d New City, NY, Dec 30, 2011).

Hungarian ceramicist, designer and teacher. Zeisel began her career studying painting at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts (Magyar Képzőmüvészeti Főiskolá) in Budapest and, after a short tenure at the Academy, Zeisel began an apprenticeship with a traditional potter, Jakob Karapancsik. While working for Karapancsik she became the first woman to gain admittance to the guild of potters and ovensetters. In 1925 she began making her own pottery and displayed it in local fairs and was subsequently discovered by the Kispester Pottery and the Hungarian government. Representatives from the government requested that her work represent Hungary in the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial. Zeisel was employed by Kispester for less than a year after which she travelled to Germany to work in Hamburg briefly and then moved to Schramberg where she worked as a ceramic designer at the Schramberger Majolika Fabrik for two years beginning in 1928. In the summer of 1930, Zeisel’s mother rented her and her brother an apartment in Berlin. It was in Berlin that she met her first husband Alexander Weissburg. Zeisel thrived in the artistic and intellectual café community. She stayed in Berlin and designed for a number of manufacturers including Christian Carstens Kommerz and Staatliche Porzellan Manufaktur. At Carstens Zeisel was involved in every aspect of production from design to manufacture and marketing. In ...

(b Chicontepec, Veracruz, Jan 1, 1947).

Mexican draughtsman, printmaker, painter, and illustrator. Zenil is known for his reworking of recognizable Pop Mexicanist imagery—or known icons of Mexicanismo (mexicanidad; Mexican identity and culture)—such as the Mexican flag, sacred heart, Virgin of Guadalupe, calaveras (skulls), and lotería (Mexican bingo) symbols among others—while collapsing boundaries of the sacred and the profane and challenging the heteronormative. Zenil has been dubbed a member of the stylistic movement neomexicanidad (Neo-Mexicanism), alongside such Mexican artists as Javier de la Garza (b 1954), Julio Galán, and Rocío Maldonado. Zenil has acknowledged Enrique Guzmán (1952–86) as the initiator of Neo-Mexicanism in his work Oh Santa Bandera (a Enrique Guzmán) (1996; Mexico City, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo), which is a reworking Guzmán’s ¡Oh! Santa bandera! (1977) that reiterates Guzmán’s early ironic reinterpretation of Mexican iconography as cultural critique.

A pioneer of Mexican Post-modernism in using strategies of appropriation, fragmentation, parody, and text, Zenil rejected the dominant style of ...

(b Sausalito, CA, Sept 6, 1965).

American sculptor and installation artist. She studied painting and sculpture at San Diego State University in San Diego, CA, graduating in 1988. She then went on to study for her MFA in sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, graduating in 1990. In 1992 she set up A–Z Administrative Services, a company which aimed to streamline domestic objects and rituals. For Prototypes for Container, Cover, Support (1993; see 1993 exh. cat., pp. 29–30), Zittel made the objects itemized in the title and gave them to a group of volunteers who then recorded their experiences of using them. Each object was designed to be as multi-functional as possible: the container, for example, could be used as a bowl, a holder and a vase. Zittel expanded on these ideas of functional living by making self-contained units for dining, study and recreation. In 1993 she began to customize the units according to the client for whom they were designed, such as the ...

(b Vienna, Aug 8, 1930).

Mexican architect of Austrian birth. He studied at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico, graduating as an engineer in 1955 and as an architect in 1963. His abilities as an engineer are reflected in several bold and ingenious structures that derive partly from the precepts of Félix Candela. Notable examples are the acoustic shell (1958) in Agua Azul Park, the Libertad Market (1959) and the ‘Presidente Adolfo López Mateos’ Sports Centre (1962), all in Guadalajara. The market is especially noteworthy for its roof of hyperbolic paraboloids, which allow for wide areas without supports. He also built residential blocks, paying careful attention to details of interior functionality, the durability and maintenance of materials and residents’ individuality. The housing complex ‘CTM-Atemajac’ (1979), Guadalajara, is one of his main achievements in this area, comprising several buildings with brick facing, none more than five storeys. Among his numerous other designs in Guadalajara, the most notable are the Banco Refaccionario de Jalisco (...

American artists.

Roberta K. Tarbell

(b Santa Rosa, CA, Sept 25, 1887; d New York, June 27, 1968).

Painter, textile artist, and printmaker. She represents an early modernist who applied Cubism and German Expressionist approaches to both painting and textile design. In Paris from 1908 to1911 she studied with Jacques-Emile Blanche and J. D. Fergusson at the Académie de la Palette, a small modernist school where she met William Zorach. She was especially inspired by German Expressionist painters and Henri Matisse, whose work she encountered in avant-garde circles. Travelling in Belgium, Spain, Germany, and France with Jessica Dismorr (later an English Vorticist), Zorach created a few etchings and painted landscapes with agitated brush strokes, Expressionist colour, and blue outlines in the manner of Whistler. She exhibited with the American Women’s Art Association (1910), and in 1911 at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne in Paris. Dismorr and Thompson contributed abstracted pen-and-ink figure drawings to the English avant-garde publication ...