The book The Statues of the Pueblo Escultor: San Agustín and the Macizo Colombiano, in its three years of existence, has turned out to be a significant and much-appreciated text. Written in english by Davíd Dellenback and translated into spanish by his wife Martha Gil along with the author, its 357 pages include the text in both languages as well as more than 100 of the author’s illustrations of the ancient sculptures. This is the first bilingual book on the subject of the ancient monoliths of the Macizo Colombiano.

The author, based on his long-term study of the stone-sculpture of the Pueblo Escultor (often poorly named the “agustinian culture” or “culture of San Agustín”), delves into the significance transmitted by the images in the Macizo statuary, and reviews the history of the art of stone-carving in America –of the myths, archetypes and occurrences therein represented– as seen through the lens provided by the sculptures of the Pueblo Escultor. The essential meanings coded into this narration allow us to follow the paths of the personages and images revealed in the sculptures, and to link them with earlier artistic manifestations, ultimately with their origins throughout America. The Statues of the Pueblo Escultor, which demonstrates that no other version in stone of this essential american vision matches that to be seen in the Macizo Colombiano, represents an important contribution to the study of this unparalleled ancient american art.

“As I read through the bibliography of the Pueblo Escultor”, the author writes, “taking in and analyzing all the various studies that have attempted to portray this ancient art and its makers, I was frustrated by finding a body of literature that mostly consisted of a dialogue between scholars, between professors. I could find little that seemed to speak to specialists and interested readers alike, to speak from a more human and less academic viewpoint, a work that would show me how and why these ancient sculptures might matter to me, and give me a way to organize and focus my interest. To give me a framework of thought and observation within which I might enjoy and create my own understanding of these fantastic images. That is the book that I have attempted to write”.

Davíd Dellenback hails from a once-small town on the northwest coast of North America; he and his colombian wife live on a farm in the countryside near San Agustín. He has been involved in his ongoing study of the history of the Macizo Colombiano and the Pueblo Escultor for more than 40 years, and has traveled extensively throughout America, visiting archaeological sites and vestiges, searching to understand the history narrated from earliest times via the continent’s stonesculpture.

The Statues of the Pueblo Escultor, whose author is a founding member of San Agustín’s Academy of History, was named in 2013 by the Government of Huila to the list of the state’s ‘Principal Cultural Expressions,’ and has been presented by the author in conference at the Féria Internacional del Libro in Bogotá as well as in numerous other events and forums in Colombia and elsewhere in America.

This book is presently available in Bogotá at the Librería librería del Fondo de Cultura Económico, the bookshop of Museo Nacional, Tango Discos & Libros and in la Casa de la Gobernación del Huila. It can also be sent by direct mail from San Agustín to any address in Colombia, or elsewhere in the world, if you care to pay the shipping. If you are interested in mail-purchase, please let us know by writing us an e-mail to contacto@puebloescultor.org