“Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism” opens to public at Philadelphia Museum of Art

Mexico's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Claudia Ruiz Massieu, joined by María Cristina García Cepeda, Director of Mexico's Fine Arts Institute inaugurated the exhibit “Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910 – 1950” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Ruiz Massieu said that the cultural and artistic exchange between the United States and Mexico helps unite and enrich both countries, and she celebrated the initiative by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Palace of Fine Arts to join efforts and create the most comprehensive exhibit dedicated to Mexican modernism in the United States in the last 70 years.

Mexico's Fine Arts Institute organized this exhibit with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which explores the fundamental period for art in Mexico during this period, when the country saw massive social, political and cultural changes following its violent revolution.

With a collection of over 200 paintings, photographs, sculptures and digital reproductions, the exhibit illustrates Mexico's transformations during the first half of the 20th century. The collection reflects how the most well-known Mexican artists, such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Frida Kahlo, among many others, transcended geographic and cultural borders.

This exhibits covers four important periods in the history of Mexican art. The first period covers the revolutionary decade that started in 1910, in which artists, who were heavily influenced by international art movements such as impressionism, symbolism and cubism, did away with Mexico's extremely conservative and traditional art forms and ushered in the 20th century.

The exhibit opens to the public in October in Philadelphia and will then make its debut in Mexico in early 2017.