The work of Mexican greats Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo will lead a giant new show of paintings, sculptures and murals inspired by the Mexican revolution at the Philadelphia Museum of Art this month.
The early 20th Century was a time of tremendous unrest and social change in Mexico, but it also produced an array of passionate artists and original art. Artists like Rivera sought to understand and depict the growing industrial society building around them and capture the lives of workers’ who struggled to survive as capitalism took root.
The exhibition, Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910–1950, seeks to tell the story of the artists who were at the forefront of the period.
“The contributions of Mexico during this period are central to the development of modern art, and yet its achievements have been largely understood through the work of a small group,” said Timothy Rub, the museum’s director.
The show, which runs from Oct. 25 to Jan. 8, will feature paintings, prints and murals of the work of not only Rivera and Kahlo, but also José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo and many others.
While much of the work of Rivera, Orosco and Siqueiro – referred to as los tres grandes (the three greats) - is on murals that can’t be moved, the museum will be re-creating them in digital form.
The exhibition gets its title from an essay called “Paint the Revolution” by the American novelist John Dos Passos who traveled to Mexico City in 1926 and witnessed the murals created by Diego Rivera that celebrate the ideals of the Mexican Revolution, the museum said.
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