Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Portrait of Adolfo Best Maugard, 1913, oil on canvas, México, INBA, Museo Nacional de Arte
Photo © Francisco Kochen, © 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, DF / Adagp, Paris

Twentieth-century Mexican art presents the paradox of being closely connected to international avant-gardes, while exhibiting an incredible singularity, a very strangeness, and a power that defies our European gaze.

In the first part of the exhibition, we discover how this modernity draws its inspiration from the collective imagination and the traditions of the 1867th century. This relationship, evident in the academic art that developed after the restoration of the Republic in 1921, will continue in the ideological precepts of the Mexican School of Painting and Sculpture, directed by José Vasconcelos from XNUMX.

International currents counterbalance this anchoring in tradition. At the turn of the 1909th century, symbolism and decadentism found fascinating expressions in Mexico, such as the famous painting by Ángel Zárraga, The Woman and the Puppet (XNUMX). Little by little, the aesthetic experiments of Mexican artists in contact with the Parisian avant-garde in the first decades of the century asserted themselves, foremost among them Diego Rivera.

The second part of the exhibition focuses on showing how the Mexican Revolution, as an armed conflict, involved the planning of a new national project. The artistic creation of the years which followed the revolution assumes an ideological character; it relies on other means than easel painting, such as muralism and graphics. The exhibition naturally emphasizes the works of the three leading artists of Mexican muralism, los tres grandes: Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco. This male revolution, which opened the way to many new possibilities, enabled women to participate in the economic effort; this situation encouraged them to make a place for themselves on the artistic scene as well, as painters or patrons.

The Frida Kahlo tree should not hide a forest of extraordinary personalities like Nahui Olin, Rosa Rolanda or the photographers Tina Modotti and Lola Álvarez Bravo.

Along with the Mexican School of Painting and Sculpture of the 20s and 30s, this period was also marked by the advent of many other experimental approaches. The triumph of Muralism and nationalist art eclipsed these alternative avant-garde movements, which claimed the right to participate in the international art scene, regardless of the revolutionary paradigm.

The third part of the exhibition allows you to discover a whole selection of artists and works presenting themselves as alternatives to the ideological discourses of the time, from the hallucinating masks of Germán Cueto to the enigmatic portraits of Robert Montenegro and the abstractions of Gerardo. Murillo “Dr. Atl” or Rufino Tamayo.

Finally, the fourth part, entitled Meeting of two worlds: Hybridization, shows how, since the beginning of the XNUMXth century, the presence of Mexican artists in the United States, such as Marius de Zayas, Miguel Covarrubias and above all the great muralists, has played a decisive role for the avant-garde movements of cities like New York, Detroit or Los Angeles. Conversely, because of the notoriety acquired by Mexican artists abroad during the first decades of the XNUMXth century, many foreign artists decided to relocate their activity to Mexico. In collaboration with local artists, they managed to develop a particularly rich scene, notably around surrealism with Carlos Mérida, José Horna, Leonora Carrington and Alice Rahon.

The exhibition closes the chronicle of these exchanges, sources of a perpetual "rebirth", with the arrival of Mathias Goeritz in Mexico in 1949, but their vitality is still illustrated in the works of major artists of the current scene, in the image of Gabriel Orozco and his “rubbings” taken in the Paris metro.

Pratical information

Commissioner: Agustin Arteaga
scenography: Jodar Architecture Workshop

opening : every day from 10 a.m. to 20 p.m., Wednesday night until 22 p.m.
Closed every Tuesday and December 25. Closed at 18 p.m. on December 24 and 31

prices : € 13, € 9 TR (16-25 years old, large family, job seekers) Tribu rate (4 people including 2 young people aged 16 to 25): € 35
Free for children under 16, beneficiaries of the RSA and the minimum retirement age

information and reservations: www.grandpalais.fr