México moderno. Vanguardia y revolución

Malba presents México moderno. Vanguardia y revolución, a broad panorama of the various modernist aesthetic projects that evolved in Mexico over the first half of the 20th century. Curated by Victoria Giraudo (Malba), Sharon Jazzan Dayan and Ariadna Patiño Guadarrama (Munal), the show features 170 works by more than 60 representative artists from this period, including Dr. Atl, Miguel Covarrubias, Saturnino Herrán, María Izquierdo, Frida Kahlo, Agustín Lazo, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Antonio Ruiz “El Corcito,” David Alfaro Siqueiros, Remedios Varo and Ángel Zárraga, many of whom are being shown in Argentina for the first time, in an unprecedented offering.

The show’s narrative of these artists’ various themes, concerns and aesthetic investigations extends over four galleries, on both of the museum’s main exhibition floors. The sections divide into “Cosmopolitan Modernity,” “Social Revolution,” “Popular Culture,” and “Surrealist Experiments.” Featured are works by the masters of muralism, the Estridentistas, the Contemporáneos, Independent or maverick artists, the first women to take part in these movements—who can be considered proto-feminists—and the different surrealisms that arose in Mexico.

The show has been organized in collaboration with the Museo Nacional de Arte de México / INBA (MUNAL), as part of a cooperative institutional agreement established in 2015. Many of the works come from this museum, which has a unique wealth of four thousand pieces from five centuries of Mexican art history, pieces which makes this the most important public collection in all Mexico.

Outstanding among the pieces on display are the famous cubist paintings of Diego Rivera Paisaje zapatista (1915) and Retrato de Martín Luis Guzmán (1915), which will be shown in the same room as Malba’s Retrato de Ramón Goméz de la Serna (1915), as well as such seminal works by this artist as Retrato de Best Maugard (1913), Vendedora de Alcatraces (1943) and the monumental, nine-meter-long painting Río Juchitán (ca.1953-55). Also included are works such as David Alfaro Siqueiros’s Retrato de María Asúnsolo (1935), his Autorretrato (el coronelazo) (1945) and Accidente en la mina (1931); José Clemente Orozco’s El desmembrado (cádaver) and Cabeza flechada (both from 1947); Dr. Atl’s Erupción de Paricutín (1943); Saturnino Herrán’s Nuestros dioses (1916); Antonio M. Ruíz’s El sueño de la Malinche (1939) and Ángel Zárraga’s La Bailarina desnuda (1907)—to name a few. Other important public and private collections have also lent works to the exhibition: the Museo de Arte Moderno de México, the Museo Carrillo Gil, the Fundación Blaisten, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires, and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, which, for the first time, is loaning out to a Latin American institution Diego Rivera’s drawing Man at the Crossroads (1932) and Frida Kahlo’s painting Fulang-Chang y yo (1937).

Also featured in this show are the key Mexican works from this period that are part of Malba’s holdings. In addition, Verboamérica—a current display in the museum—provides a regional context for comparison, dialogue and reflection on theoretical debates about modern Latin American art in relation to cultural identity: the indigenous-issues, work, the city, geopolitics, among other themes.

Finally, the exhibition has also provided the perfect occasion to show Diego Rivera’s Baile en Tehuantepec (1928), one of the artist’s most important creations, a clear reference to the Mexican indigenous cultural tradition. Purchased by Eduardo F. Costantini in 2016, this monumental work is on display again in Latin America for the first time in thirty years.

Upcoming exhibiton
Malba opens next Thursday, November 30 at 7pm, the exhibition project Salida de los obreros del museo. Taller y República a partir de Tucumán arde by Venezuelan artist Alexander Apóstol (Barquisimeto, 1969). Developed especially for the museum and coproduced with the Bienalsur, the project curated by Agustín Perez Rubio and Diana Weschler, offers an open and collective discussion about the relationship between art and politics, taking off from a contemporary re-elaboration of the 1968 manifesto Tucumán arde: can we today re-propose a debate that takes off from strategies of production and circulation similar to the ones devised at that moment?