Noticias
At the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts
The exhibition, Pinta la Revolución shows four decades of Mexican art.
February 13, 2017The art that expressed the political, social and economic changes derived from the Mexican Revolution, and the subsequent construction of a new nation are presented in the exhibition Pinta la Revolucion: Modern Mexican Art 1910-1950, which was seen by hundreds of people on Sunday, February 12th.
Allegories, portraits of a time, the multiple faces that make up a society, embodied in different avant-gardes and techniques, made in the first half of the twentieth century, are part of what is offered in this exhibition that the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts will house until May 7th.
Visitors such as Fernanda Mota toured the 220 pieces, including paintings, portable murals, printed matters, newspaper copies, photographs, digital books, radio interviews and Mexican films fragments, some of which she captured with her cell phone camera.
One of them was Manuel Rodríguez Lozano's The Holocaust (1944), in which a long figure of a dead man surrounded by mournful ghostly women can be seen.
"From this painting I was struck by the detail, the shape. I had never heard the name of this artist, so I realize that there were more artists, besides Rivera, Tamayo or Siqueiros, who did works and are considered important for Mexican art”.
She recognized some of the paintings as front pages of her history books at school and said that the engravings, easel paintings, drawing and photography that are part of the exhibition, moved her to a Mexico with problems that in the second decade of the 21st century are still in force.
The exhibition is divided into five key themes: Modernism and Mexicaneity, Paint the Revolution, In the City, Paint the United States and Dark Allegories. It was presented in late 2016 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and was considered by The New York Times as the best of that year.
The pieces that can be enjoyed in chronological order show the creativity of outstanding figures in the mural art of the Schools of Outdoor Painting, Estridentism, Surrealism, Contemporaries, the Popular Graphic Workshop, the League of Writers and Revolutionary Artists (LEAR, for its acronym in Spanish), photographers, filmmakers, architects and other artists, whose innovation and proposal would contribute to Mexican and universal art.
The section called Paint the United States, located in the 1920s and 1930s, was the one that most caught the attention of Antonio Alvarado. Here, Frida Kahlo’s work, Self-portrait on the border between Mexico and the United States, stands out.
"It is clear that artists express their context, influences and interests in their art. In each section, the situation in Mexico is explained, and why the artists were attracted or the circumstances pushed them to work outside their country makes the paintings and its content more understandable. "
The curatorial proposal of this tour was designed jointly between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Institute of Fine Arts. It brings together works by Francisco Goitia, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Frida Kahlo, Gerardo Murillo Dr. Atl, Roberto Montenegro, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Miguel Covarrubias and Rufino Tamayo.
Pieces like Pyramid by Francisco Goitia, Allegory of the work by Saturnino Herrán, Portrait by Luis Martin Guzmán, Zapatistas by Alfredo Ramos Martínez, and Volumes and textures by David Alfaro Siqueiros stand out.
The exhibition also features and shows foreign artists’ proposals who worked in Mexico, such as Rosa Rolanda, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Pablo O'Higgins and Tina Modotti. Also, Mexican films fragments can be seen, and audios are included in which artists’ own voice can be listened to.
Painting the Revolution: Mexican Modern Art 1910-1950 can be visited in the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts from Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Sundays, free entry.
Mexico,Distrito Federal
