Mexican Modern Painting from the Andrés Blaisten Collection

The first half of the 20th century in Mexico was punctuated by revolutions both political and artistic. A comprehensive survey of this dynamic period at The San Diego Museum of Art features 80 paintings from the world-famous Andrés Blaisten collection in Mexico City to demonstrate the great diversity of talents that played a part in Mexico’s cultural renaissance.

Drawn from Andrés Blaisten’s extensive collection of over 8,000 works, Mexican Modern Painting presents a complete cross-section of art dating from 1900 to 1950. In addition to presenting works by some of the more recognizable painters, like Diego Rivera, José Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo, the exhibition also offers an opportunity to discover the work of a number of other talented artists, including María Izquierdo, Raúl Anguiano, Olga Costa, Guillermo Meza, Angel Zárraga, to name few.

As evidenced by the exhibition, Mexican modern art did not begin and end with the works of los tres grandes of the Mexican mural movement: Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros. In fact, as seen in one section of the show, a number of their avant-garde contemporaries shied away from the muralists’ nationalistic agenda in favor of portraying Mexico’s indigenous cultures following the Mexican Revolution of 1920.

Another significant development in Mexican modern art explored in the exhibition is the Open-Air Painting Schools movement. Led by prominent artists like Ramos Martínez and Gabriel Ledesma, the open-air schools helped spread the revolutionary potential of artistic expression to younger generations of working-class people around Mexico City.

One other major theme that can be gleaned from the exhibition is the visual dialogue that took place between the various artists, who were not only inspired by avant-garde movements abroad, but from each other as well, as they experimented with different styles and depicted a diverse range of subject matter..