Noticias
The exhibition Painted in Mexico 1700-1790. Pinxit Mexici is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
April 24, 2018New York, NY., USA. The exhibition Painted in Mexico 1700-1790. Pinxit Mexici, made up of 130 works of museums and collections from Mexico, the United States and Europe, offers one of the most important tours of 18th-century Mexican painting and a link to other European art schools, was presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York (MET) on Monday night, April 23, after its successful exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) between November 2017 and March 2018.
Secretary of Culture, María Cristina García Cepeda, said that this exhibition represents a revaluation of the New Hispanic painting produced in Mexico during the 18th century as a whole. It was a period marked by important stylistic developments and the invention of new and suggestive iconographies. Many of the works are on display for the first time, and the exhibition will contribute to increasing the appreciation of New Spain’s painting.
María Cristina García Cepeda was accompanied at the opening ceremony by Cándida Fernández, director of Fomento Cultural Banamex, the institution that organized the exhibition in collaboration with Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The great exhibition brings together works from the collections of museums and collections such as the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the National Museum of History, the National Museum of the Viceroyalty, the National Museum of Interventions and the Museum of Guadalupe, among others.
Also present at the opening ceremony were Diego Gómez Pickering, Consul General of Mexico in New York; Michael Govan, Director of LACMA; Quincy Houghton, Deputy Director of Exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Don Callahan, head of Operations and Technology at Citigroup, Rodrigo Zorrilla, Citibanamex's Deputy CEO, and curators Ronda Kasl and Ilona Katzew.
Secretary of Culture welcomed the fact that this artistic project represents the sum of the will that the Mexican Department of Culture announces in favor of initiatives arising from cultural organizations and foundations that maintain a permanent commitment to artistic promotion and its international diffusion.
She said that the New Spanish creators knew how to establish with their own language the reflection of European models and world views. They did it in this continent, a new world that spread its artistic wings from the miscegenation, from the millennial cultures, that the visitors will be able today to know and discover.
María Cristina García Cepeda pointed out that this exhibition is complemented with works by Miguel Cabrera, Antonio de Torres, José de Ibarra, Juan Rodríguez Juárez, Francisco Antonio Vallejo, among other Mexican masters. "We share with the Metropolitan Museum of New York and its public our pride in our historical memory, our artistic expressions that give us identity, which are a melting pot of centuries of history”.
The exhibition is divided into seven main sections that cover the peculiarities and generalities of 18th century New Spanish painting, its guilds and academies, as well as the renewal of the pictorial tradition and the rise of the Mexican school of painting.
The section, Between the Guild and the Academy. The renovation of the pictorial tradition, addresses the strategies of the painting corporation to highlight the greatness of their art with the introduction of new styles, techniques and iconographies, while Pinxit Mexici: The success of the Mexican school of painting shows how the outstanding painters of the 18th century spanned more than three generations, standing out examples such as Nicolás and Antonio Enríquez, Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz, Juan Antonio Vallejo, José de Alzíbar, José de Páez, Andrés López, and Rodrigo Gutiérrez, among others.
The section, the Art of Narrating and Expressing explores the tradition of creating replicas, not as a work of imitation without originality, but as a highly demanding method that included techniques of all kinds, brought from New Spain. The pictorial world of allegory shows the long tradition of painting images and emblems in New Spanish painting and how the practice reached its peak in the eighteenth century on behalf of ecclesiastical orders.
The section, Painting of the Earth: Master of the Art of Describing shows how throughout the 18th century, especially after 1750, painters became more aware of a local school of Mexican painting and developed new themes.
The thematic core, The portrait speech: individuals and corporations summarizes the growing obsession with the hierarchical order of Mexican society and how the tradition of portrait was most prevalent during the 18th century; in addition, the section The image of the image: The stroke of the divine includes paintings that were copied from sacred effigies of sculptural images, relics, and other paintings, many of them considered miraculous.
Painted in Mexico 1700-1790. Pinxit Mexici, is presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, until July.
Mexico,Distrito Federal
