A superb collection of modern masterpieces that captures the vibrant culture of a nationThis richly illustrated publication accompanies the major exhibition, The Marvelous Real: Art from Mexico, hosted by the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA, Vancouver, Canada). The texts and images profile the works of over fifty artists, including modern practitioners, such as, Dr Atl, Leonora Carrington, Jean Charlot, Pedro Friedeberg, Frida Kahlo, Juan O'Gorman, Alice Rahon, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Juan Soriano, and Rufino Tamayo, whose canvases capture the many essences of Mexico. The book also encompasses a younger generation of visual artists, like Sandra Cabriada, Alfredo Castañede, Gunther Gerzso, Adela Goldbard, YishaiJusidman, Betsabeé Romero, and Francisco Toledo, whose creations similarly blend and evoke the extraordinary qualities of the exotic and the everyday. Uniting these art forms, which span an 85-year period (1926-2011), is the idea of the 'marvelous real' developed by the Cuban novelist and cultural critic, Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980). For Carpentier, the marvelous real filters through the arts, history, and everyday life in Latin America. Yet, it is not a romantic vision of life, predicated on an idealized, exotic imaginary; rather the marvelous real encompasses the beauty and brutality, the monotony and magic of existence in and between human, spiritual, and ecological worlds. The idea and the variegated imagery of the marvelous real are explored in the three essays written by Alejo Carpentier, Nicola Levell, and Anthony Shelton.