The Mexican Renaissance
THE RECLAMATION OF VOICE
From the mire of the bloody Mexican Revolution, a flowering of artistic activity grew in Mexico. Through paintings, photographs, and prints, artists used their voices to criticize brutality and exalt the memory of their great indigenous civilization. This art was about the people—people as members of a cultural community and as distinct individuals. They celebrated their pre-Columbian heritage in imagery, but employed a Western sense of aesthetics and media. This blend created an art that was specifically Mexican.
WHEN & WHERE
c. 1920s–1950s
Mexico
“Los Tres Grandes” (The Big Three), Diego Rivera, José Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros painted Mexico City and beyond with vivid, didactic frescos and murals that were accessible to all—worker and politician, wealthy and poor. Idealized pictures of a pre-conquest past and Mexican folk imagery projected a hopeful future. Yet, scathing images of the atrocities of colonialism and dictatorship criticized the present. Much of this work was meant to promote socialist ideals and protest oppression.
José Clemente Orozco, Government Palace, Guadalajara, Mexico, 1939.
Though hardly as political, Frida Kahlo’s intense, personally symbolic paintings explore a lifetime of physical and emotional suffering in a world mixed with Meso-american and European culture. Often surreal in organization and imagery, her many self-portraits depict her as a proud Mexican woman in scenes both darkly disturbing and vibrant with life.
This was a prolific movement that continues to grow and update itself. Many contemporary Mexican artists still investigate their identities as being a blend of two great cultural forces. —ARR
Selected artists: Lola Álvarez Bravo, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros