México 200
Tierra y Gente: Modern Mexican Works on Paper

José Guadalupe Posada: The Birth of Mexican Modernism

Concourse

June 18, 2010–February 13, 2011

Drawn from the Dallas Museum of Art’s exceptional holdings of mid-20th-century Mexican works on paper, this selection of prints, drawings, and photographs reflect many of the major artists, styles, and ideas of an astonishingly rich and internationally significant moment in the history of Mexican art. 
 
Strongly influenced by José Guadalupe Posada, Mexican artists focused on issues of political and military strife, social and economic egalitarianism, and the formation of new national identities in the years following the 1910 revolution. Another aspect that unified these artists was their ingenious fusion of indigenous traditions of ancient American art and the most current ideas of international modernism, and their development of a visual language that could speak across the broadest spectrum of society.
 
This exhibition emphasizes how artists depicted Mexican people interacting with the Mexican landscape. A striking common feature of these works is how human forms are fused with landscape in both literal and abstract ways. We see in these evocative renderings of land and people how artists portrayed people living on, and, more metaphorically, being, the land and country of Mexico itself.
 
Such ideas of land and people form a powerful thread running through this important and vital period that has achieved iconic status within 20th-century art history, the influence of which is still being felt today in Mexico and around the world.

México 200 is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. The exhibition is presented by Bimbo Bakeries USA and BBVA Compass. Additional support is provided by Northwestern Mutual Financial Network, The Texas Financial Group – Dallas. Air transportation provided by American Airlines. Promotional support provided by Metroplex Cadillac and Univision 23 and Univision Radio.

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Images:

Raul Anguiano, Head (Cabeza),1944, lithograph, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Pan American Round Table #1, 1947.39

Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Optical Parable (Parábola óptica),1938, printed in 1992, Gelatin silver print, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of DMA Friends of Photography, 1993.35

Rufino Tamayo, Bird at Hand, n.d., lithograph, Dallas Museum of Art, Collection of Robert Harville Bishop, gift of Eugene H. Bishop, 2003.29.3