Inca Art

People believe that the pottery is the only inca art that the inca civilization create, but there is more art that you imagine; In this page I will give you a brief explanation of the highlights of the artwork expressions of this ancient culture.

The best well known incas art is the inca pottery, they develop a large shape and conical base ceramics that they call macka o puyñun, now in our days we call it aryballos, name that came from the Greeks that create similar pottery in the 9th century, the only reason of the similarity is because both cultures came with the same solution to the same problem.

The inca clothing was another interesting art; The incas collect their knowledge about textiles from other cultures; Ones the incas conquer a new culture, they fusion the new textile technology into their own, but applying the incas geometrical designs, animals shapes and other images; The type of designs, the colors and the quality of the textiles were very important, because they define the social class, family lineage, government authorities and military status.

The painting was very simple for the incas; They use mud to plaster the wall that was about to be paint, following that, they paint the walls with a white color base, before apply the final design and in other cases the inca artist carve the wall, drawing the design, before it was paint.

The feathers were an important element of the incas legacy, as a matter of fact they develop quite excellent skills to decorate all kind of objects like inca masks, head decorations, temple walls decorations, armors of brave inca warriors, manual fans and many other useful artifacts, the incas got the feathers by hunting and breeding in captivity different tropical birds, specially parrots.

Another well know inca art is the metallurgy; The incas it self did not develop this technology, the incas collect from other cultures all the metallurgy masters and change their names to inca jewelry masters; They work directly for the inca king, creating gold and silver artifacts, some of them work for private orders from authorities or important people from the inca empire.

Today, very few inca gold artifacts had survive intact, because the spaniards collect all the inca gold and silver from the entire kingdom and melted, to create gold and silver coins so they could ship them to Spain; It is impossible to imagine how many inca artifacts made in gold and silver were destroy during the spaniard rule.

The inca music was very important for the incas and the flute was the most popular instrument of all, any person with a basic knowledge could made his own flute with reeds; Flutes were made also with human bones, clay, or silver, an interesting fact could be that, the incas did not know any string instruments; The music and dances were close related with religious ceremonies and usually perform in the day by day agriculture work.

The inca poetry was express by inca poets, who were dancing and semi singing the poems; All the inca poetry was based in wishes of good health, good crops and victories of battles with enemies; The inca poetry was originally created by the inca military, because they want to build reputation for important inca warriors; Some time after, it became popular for inca authorities and rich families to hire inca poets in special celebrations.

The inca art of carving wood had it highlight in the production of Queros; The queros are glasses of regular capacity, made in wood and decorated with three dimensional figures of jaguars, other animals and images of past events; The inca artifacts master prepare special queros, with incisions of gold and silver, they use gemstones in the teeths and eyes of the jaguars figures, this special queros were use for religious ceremonies.

And finally the most impressive of all, the inca art of carving stone; The inca architecture engineers divide the workers in three groups, the first group was responsible to cut the stone in large square pieces, the second group of artisans give the geometrical shape to the stones and the final group, was the inca stone carving masters, they were responsible to polish the stone with sand before it was ship to the construction site.

See Inca Art Tours

Do you have
any Questions?
Ask Me!

Anonymous Chat