Noticias
Also includes muralists folding screens made in Lecumberri
A new reading of David Alfaro Siqueiros´s work at Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros
February 28, 2017Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros’s relationships with artists, writers and young theorists in the sixties and seventies, are addressed in the exhibition, The return of the realism. Siqueiros and the neo-avant-garde (1958-1974), on view from March 1st at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS, for its acronym in Spanish).
The exhibition presents 18 works including studies, sketches, lithographs, photographic material, documentary and easel paintings. The artist’s folding screens made in 1960, during one of his stays at the Palacio Lecumberri as part of the set design of Licenciado no te apures, stand out in this exhibition shown for the first time.
According to curator Julio García Murillo, the folding screens have iconographic representations that appear recurrently in his work, as the proletarian mother.
"We believe that they worked and activated the dynamic notion of Siqueiros’s work, in which when they turn over they change of scene. There are takes of how Siqueiros manipulated the folding screens made up of four panels each painted on both sides”.
That is how visitors can learn more about Siqueiros’s facet as a set designer and his relationship with creators such as playwright and theater director Juan José Gurrola and painter Arnold Belkin.
"The exhibition tries to distance itself a little from the generalized reading that has been made of Siqueiros during the sixties and seventies as an old-fashioned officer to complicate him with other agents. In that sense, he also tries to make evident his relations or fights with Jose Luis Cuevas, Manuel Felguérez, Alberto Isaac; and on the other hand, his collaborations with Juan José Gurrola and Arnold Belkin, from new experimental languages”, Garcia Murillo said.
Also, two unknown pieces from the Siqueiros Project collection, recovered in 2010 during the remodeling process of la Tallera, are included in the exhibition. These are preparatory studies for the mural, The march of humanity.
Through seven thematic sections, the display also proposes a reflection on the disputes between what we know as the generation of La Ruptura (the breakup) against Siqueiros and abstract art against realistic art.
On the other hand, one of the elements that stands out in the exhibit is the way in which Siqueiros conceived the SAPS, house of the painter that became museum in 1969 with the idea of showing muralism like a total work of art.
Botanical insurgencies: Phaseolus lunatus
As part of the 2017 exhibition program, the SAPS will also present the exhibition Botanical Insurgencies: Phaseolus lunatus, in the Cubo and in the Proyecto Fachada of the building located in Tres Picos number 29, in Polanco.
It is an assembly by Ximena Garrido-Lecca, who analyzes the politicization of public space and the use of vernacular materials in handicrafts, the construction of infrastructure and agriculture throughout Peruvian history.
So, she made a structure made of mud, wood and copper with a hydroponic system where plants from Peruvian pallares will grow (herbaceous family legumes).
The grains will serve to re-read ideograms of the Mochica civilization, ancestral culture of Peru, as well as emphasize the tension of modernization processes that have caused changes in the rural landscape.
The installation that supports the crops looks like a pre-Hispanic agricultural terrace, while the mud refers to the Peruvian and Mesoamerican traditional legacy.
The artist nominated to the Future Generation Art Prize of the Pinchuk Art Center in Ukraine in 2014, worked in collaboration with a team of biologists from the Metropolitan Autonomous University Xochimilco.
It is the first time that this variety of pallar has been cultivated through a hydroponic system in our country.
Mexico,Distrito Federal
