Frist exhibit spotlights Mexican artists
The exhibition, which a recent Los Angeles Times review called “a revelation,” examines the vital contributions made by Mexican artists such as Jos? Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Rufino Tamayo who, while known more for their murals and paintings, made a wide-reaching impact on the world of printmaking. Mexico and Modern Printmaking features 125 woodcuts, linoleum cuts, etchings and lithographs by 50 Mexican artists, and a number of artists from outside the country who came to Mexico to be a part of its printmaking renaissance.
The exhibition comprises prints and posters made from the end of the Mexican Revolution until the period immediately following World War II. Fought from 1910 to 1920, the Mexican Revolution overthrew the 30-year dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and established such far-reaching goals as equitable distribution of land, full literacy and racial equality. The spirit of reform was accompanied by a new appreciation for the art and culture of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, and Mexico?s leading artists launched a national art movement that evoked the nation?s agrarian past while embodying and communicating the social and political goals of the Revolution.
Mexico and Modern Printmaking was organized by John Ittmann, Curator of Prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Lyle Williams, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the the McNay. “As Mexican artists embraced the graphic arts, they helped define a post-Revolution Mexican identity,” says Lyle Williams. “Printmaking in Mexico changed the notion of what public art is, and posters and prints emerged as the ideal means for disseminating political and social as well as artistic ideas. This was an art of the people for the people.”
“Post-Revolution Mexico witnessed a broad-based revival in printmaking that developed alongside the better-known public mural program,” adds John Ittmann. “Trained artists shed their academic styles and determined to bring their prints to broad segments of the Mexican populace, whose own daily routines and familiar surroundings became the true-to-life subjects of everybody?s prints. This exhibition presents the groundbreaking contributions of Mexican and foreign-born artists at a pivotal moment in Mexican art.”
The exhibition is drawn almost entirely from the collections of the two organizing museums. The Philadelphia Museum of Art possesses exceptionally rich holdings of prints by Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros and Tamayo, largely as a result of the collecting interests of Carl Zigrosser, the Museum?s Curator of Prints from 1940 until 1963. A distinguished print historian and enthusiastic promoter of modern printmaking, Zigrosser was the director of New York?s Weyhe Gallery from 1919 to 1940, when the gallery was a major advocate of modern Mexican art. In the exhibition, prints from the Philadelphia Museum of Art are joined by others from the McNay, which owns an especially broad range of work by artists affiliated with the Taller de Gr?fica Popular (Graphic Workshop of the People). A much-celebrated print workshop founded in Mexico City in 1937, the Taller played a crucial role in sustaining the Revolution?s lofty ideals by simultaneously publishing limited-edition prints of Mexican subjects, aimed at international collectors, and mass-produced posters and leaflets, intended for widespread distribution to the native populace.
Mexico and Modern Printmaking: A Revolution in the Graphic Arts, 1920?1950 will be divided into three sections. The first will examine the rediscovery of printmaking by Mexican artists in the wake of the Revolution, while showing how artists sought to define Mexican identity through its historical past and in images of everyday life. The second will focus on works by the three artists most closely associated with the Mexican mural movement: Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jos? Clemente Orozco (known in Mexico as “Los Tres Grandes” for the magnificence of their work). The third section will address art as an agent of social and political reform, highlighting the advocacy and visual polemics of the Taller de Gr?fica Popular during its first dozen years of operation.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Frist Center has received a grant from the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services to fund select programs and activities during the exhibition, and the addition of a bilingual educator to the Frist Center staff. The Frist Center also is working with the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies at Vanderbilt University on a number of collaborative programs, including community outreach, translation services and public programs.
Gallery information for this exhibition?including artwork descriptions and the gallery guide?will be available in Spanish.
The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, located at 919 Broadway in downtown Nashville, Tenn., is an art exhibition center dedicated to presenting the finest visual art from local, regional, U.S. and international sources in a program of changing exhibitions. Gallery admission to the Frist Center is free for visitors 18 and under and to Frist Center members. Frist Center admission is $8.50 for adults, $7.50 for seniors and military, and $6.50 for college students with ID. Discounts are offered for groups of 10 or more with advance reservation by calling (615) 744-3246. The Frist Center is open seven days a week: Mondays through Wednesdays and Saturdays, 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays, 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.; and Sundays, 1:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., with the Caf? opening at noon. Additional information is available by calling (615) 244-3340 or by visiting our Web site at www.fristcenter.org.