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8/2/2015

Los condenados de la tierra / el mundo otro

Museo Amparo, Ciudad de Puebla

The Wretched of the Earth is the title of a paradigmatic book, first published in 1961, by Martinique-born author Frantz Fanon, wherein he reflects extensively on colonialism. The title is a transliteration of the first line of The Internationale, the quintessential anthem of the working class and revolutionary movement: Arise, pariahs of the Earth!

The phrase describes very eloquently the group of works gathered for this Gallery, which crystallize the artists’ interpretations of terrible social conditions from the point of view of one of the most emblematic political conflicts of the 20th century: the Mexican Revolution. For José Clemente Orozco, this event unveiled a new order, where the masses and the people staged a dramatic and barbarous play; it is with these words that this painter from Jalisco described in his autobiography the social changes which took place in Mexico during those revolutionary years.

Orozco depicts the abuses of power, suffering and misery. These issues would transcend the local anecdote and become instituted in the great overarching theme to be found in virtually all of his figurative work, including the murals he painted in the United States: human drama, physical violence, corpses and humiliations. As the title of this exhibition and the title of Fanon’s book suggest, Orozco exposes the condition of the wretched.

For his part, David Alfaro Siqueiros also portrays poverty as a socially tragic phenomenon, apart from the direct reference to revolutionary events. In some of his works he describes this theme with precise and vigorous strokes of great psychological strength, while in others, his long, emphatic and loose strokes define situations reflecting the intensity of the political positions of the working and revolutionary masses.

This exhibition includes a remarkable selection of works by José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, emblematic artists from the Alvar Carrillo Gil Collection. Both artists were Carrillo’s personal friends and he amassed a rich trove of their work. He acquired nearly 170 works from the former, and around fifty outstanding pieces from the latter, currently in the collection of the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil.

This collector from Yucatan became interested in the works of Mexican modern artists who depicted the country without folkloric accents, and formally in tune with the European avant-garde, an irreplaceable art referent in the 20th century. Hence, for both Orozco and Siqueiros, the task of representing chapters in the history of Mexico meant not only creating a visual chronicle of these events, but establishing painting and drawing as products of risky formal explorations.

Gallery 2 | For modern intellectuals the Mexican landscape is closely intertwined with the poverty of its people, as if the barren land and the thorny nature of the magueys defined the miserable and violent character of human life on Earth.

This view of the landscape as a determinant of human behavior, derived from 19th century philosophical positivism, was absorbed by much of the artistic production of the 20th century. For this reason, this section highlights scenes where Mexican painters José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros portray desolate geographies, where men and women wander as ghosts.

Similarly, the architecture in these scenarios is very eloquent in its depiction of human violence and is yet another manifestation of the damnation of the Earth. Orozco represents the environment built from very simple and schematic figures, of geometric forms. These houses in the rugged landscape are being razed, and this is used by the artist to reinforce the idea of destruction in revolutionary times. For his part, Siqueiros depicts a burnt, stony landscape through the use of innovative materials, such as pyroxylin, an industrial lacquer, which allowed him to give highly original finishes to his paintings.

The artists in this exhibition, who figure prominently in the Carrillo Gil Collection, draw a crystal clear panorama of modern Mexican art from the second decade of the 20th century through the end of the sixties. It is only natural to remember that this is due to the significance of the places presented in these works, their local spirit and their symbolic space as representations of the country.

Gallery 3 | It is interesting to recognize how the Carrillo Gil collection straddles two seemingly opposite spheres: on the one hand, it is a survey of Mexico’s violent history as depicted in the graphic works of José Clemente Orozco and the tensions presented by David Alfaro Siqueiros in his depictions of essentially Mexican political and historical settings. On the other hand, the innovative and shattering impetus of the European avant-garde, evident in the exceptional series of Cubist paintings by Diego Rivera, as well as artists associated with abstraction, such as Gunther Gerzso. Equally interesting are the approaches to this language taken by José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros from the perspective of landscape painting.

As opposed to the terrible situations presented in Galleries 1 and 2, the works exhibited here reveal another world; hence the title chosen for this section of the exhibition. Carrillo Gil was not particularly interested in the contributions made by Diego Rivera after his years in Europe between 1911 and 1921. Instead, he became fascinated by Rivera’s Cubist period, far removed from the political rhetoric of his later murals, and his classicist figuration of local traditions. Similarly, in contrast with the socially committed work of artists associated with Mexican Muralism, Gunther Gerzso’s presence stands out. Gerzso’s was a creator whose artwork cemented various European and Latin American abstractions: from the Spatialism of Italian origin to his experiments in the field of Matteric Informalism, and above all his geometric abstraction, standing out as the most significant work by this Mexican painter of German and Hungarian descent.

In this sense, Dr. Alvar Carrillo Gil’s collection demonstrates the tensions through which artistic modernity developed in Mexico and Latin America: an intellectual challenge which consisted of an attempt, made from the peripheral barbarism, to fulfill the desire for access to the European avant-garde culture. It is in this place of conflict between the local and the universal (a dichotomy that apparently has been overcome), where the very essence of this collection lies: between the wretchedness of the Earth and the other world.

Image: Diego Rivera, Un pintor en reposo. Óleo sobre tela 1916

Museo Amparo
2 Sur 708, Historic District, Puebla, Puebla. C.P. 72000 Mexico
Open Wednesday through Monday 10 am to 6 pm
Wednesday to Sunday
$35.00 General public
$25.00 Students/teachers with ID
Monday: Free admission

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