Identity and Art: Exhibition of Mexican Artists in El Paso, Texas

Presented by CommuUNITY en Acción, the exhibition entitled Magnificent Mexico: 20th Century Modern Masterworks was inaugurated on January 28 at the El Paso Museum of Art. Open to the public until May 27, this exhibition includes works by some of the most prominent Mexican artists of the past century. The show is divided in three exhibitions, each containing works from several cultural institution in Mexico City: Magnitud Mexicana: Visions of Art; Dibujos Divinos: 20th Century Drawings, from the Museo Nacional de Arte- MUNAL; and Diego Rivera and the Cubist Vision from the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil. This represents the largest collective exhibition of modern Mexican masters ever to be shown in the city of El Paso. It includes a total of 91 original paintings and drawings by more than 50 prominent artists. The Magnitud Mexicana exhibition hall presents forty works that showcase a variety of themes and techniques by artists like muralists Orozco and Siqueiros; political engravings by José Guadalupe Posada; paintings of lyrical visions by powerful creators like María Izquierdo, Rufino Tamayo, and Gilberto Aceves-Navarro; as well as more abstract and/or contemporary works by artists like Mario Rangel-Faz and Helen Escobedo. In the section of Dibujos Divinos-an exhibition first shown in Paris in 2010-one can appreciate charcoal drawings and watercolors that belong to the art created between 1900 and 1945, during the post-revolutionary era. The exhibition includes works by Alfredo Ramos-Martínez, regarded as the "father" of Mexican modernism; by Saturnino Herrán, the first artist to consider an "entirely Mexican" art; and by Roberto Montenegro, Antonio Fabres, Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo), Diego Rivera, and Julio Castellanos, among others. In the Diego Rivera hall visitors are presented with eight portrait paintings by the Mexican master that analyze the singular relationship Rivera had with Synthetic Cubism. The works approach themes associated with identity and nationalism during a period of great socio-political unrest both in Mexico and in Europe. One of the functions of art throughout history has been to unify, define and/or reinforce both individual and national identities. The walk through the various exhibition areas that are part of Magnificent Mexico not only offers a great opportunity to learn the different components that form the Mexican folklore, but it also offers a chance to understand¿historically and visually-the Mexican struggle to solidify and secure a national and artistic identity.