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Meadows Museum announces Mexican Painting From the Andres Blaisten Collection exhibition

The Meadows Museum presents Mexican Painting From the Andres Blaisten Collection, an exhibition on view April 29 – August 12, 2012.

Manuel González Serrano. Equilibrio (Proyección, margen), (ca. 1944)

Assembled over a period of 30 years, the Andrés Blaisten Collection has become a reference and one of the most complete readings of early 20th-century art in Mexico. The exhibition presents 80 fundamental works from this esteemed collection by more than 40 outstanding Mexican artists of the early 20th century.

Traditionally, Mexican art of the early 20th century has been regarded as insular, its artists working for the most part without an awareness of avant-garde European art. This exhibition disproves that notion, with a diversity of offerings that clearly demonstrate the influence of the various “-isms” of the modern era on Mexican artists and their work of this period. Additionally the fame of the latter has been restricted to a handful of titans such as Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Rufino Tamayo. Though the exhibition contains fine examples from these masters, its real triumph is bringing to light their many talented, but lesser-known colleagues such as María Izquierdo, Roberto Montenegro, Fernandez Ledesma and Ramos Martínez. The dazzling variety of talent on display offers the viewer a rich and complex view of this “golden age” of Mexican art. This was a period of great creativity, intense experimentation, and cultural exploration driven by the need to create an aesthetic identity that would represent Mexico as a nation-state. Visitors will have the opportunity to explore the cultural and artistic riches of a country whose contributions to art not only have enriched the most important international artistic movements, but also have influenced the currents of the modern age through a vision that incorporated inherently Mexican elements.

Andrés Blaisten, whose collection is comprised of more than 8,000 works of art – including paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints – first began collecting while studying painting at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City in the late 1960s. At first casually buying paintings from his artist friends, Blaisten soon dropped out of the academy and alongside his business ventures, devoted himself to selecting art that reflected his own relationship with Mexico. Although Blaisten has acquired works from various periods, this exhibition focuses on a predominant interest of his: paintings created in Mexico in the first half of the last century.

“The depth and breadth of Blaisten’s collection is a unique experience, to understand the entire span of modernism in Mexican art in one single collection,” says Meadows Museum Director Mark A. Roglán. “Through his eyes, one can truly see the evolution of modern art within Mexico.”
Several of the artists represented in the exhibition studied and/or worked in Spain, or were influenced by Spanish art in other ways; seeing their paintings in the context of the Meadows’ collection of Spanish art, especially those works from the same period, will enable visitors to detect early European influences, and understand how many of these Mexican artists later began to forge their own artistic path distinct from their European contemporaries.

This exhibition is organized by Museo Colección Blaisten of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, in cooperation with the Phoenix Art Museum, The San Diego Museum of Art, and The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University.

This exhibition was previously on display at the following venues: July 1, 2011 – September 25, 2011 | Phoenix Museum of Art November 5, 2011 – February 19, 2012 | San Diego Museum of Art

Visit www.meadowsmuseumdallas.org for more information.

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