The Philippines meets Mexican Art
Yuchengco Museum in Makati City recently unmasked to public their newest exhibit, Mexican Modernity: 20th Century Paintings from the Zapanta Mexican Art Collection.
The exhibit showcases 40 paintings from 25 renowned artists such as Frida Kahlo, Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo and the likes.
Exploring the exhibit, one can see the eerie similarity of the paintings with those artworks created by Filipino artists. History-wise, both nations have been dominated by the Spaniards for quite some time, influencing them with the European style of producing art.
The exhibit, however, also showcases predominant indigenous themes which the artists use to show that Mexico has not fully adapted the influence brought by Spain.
One factor that makes the exhibit exemplary is how it is arranged to show the progress of Mexican art. It showed works from early masters of Mexican Art such as Miguel Cabrera, Gerardo Murillo, Alfredo Ramos Martinez and Roberto Montenegro.
Works from Mexican muralists, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, who are known as the Los Tres Grandes, who developed a bold artistic style, are featured in the exhibit.
Second-generation muralists who were Raul Anguiano, Jesus Guerrero Galvan, Alferdo Zalce, Federico Cantu, Francisco Zuniga and Gustavo Montoya have artworks of indigenous motifs and European-influenced artistic styles displayed in the gallery.
Among the artworks presented are from three important women artists whose themes would show surrealism, daily life and personal concerns.
Dr. Zapanta was able to acquire Frida Kahlo’s original Por La Paz (For Peace) drawing which she carried in 1954 in a political rally against the military coup in Guatemala.
The other two women are Leonora Carrington, who is British-born and a surrealist, and Olga Costa, whose works shows commonplace objects with simplicity.
The La Ruptura paintings broke away from the romanticized version of the Mexican society. The artworks are mostly created with dark color to portray the realities faced by the country.
Paintings from Jose Luis Cuevas, Rafael Coronel, Alfredo Castañeda and Emilio Ortiz showed the misfortune of individuals, homelessness of street people, and obesity of characters.
Artworks from the Oaxocan Movement showed the pre-Hispanic artistic traditions of Mexicans through the use of vibrant colors and grand presentation of their chosen themes.
Such artists in this movement includes Rufino Tamayo, Vladimir Cora, Alejandro Colunga, Rodolfo Morales and Francisco Toledo.
Dr. Richard and Rebecca Zapanta, who own the collection, decided to make their collection a travelling exhibit as it can be an analogy to the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade which transpired in the 16th to 19th centuries. It is a shared culture, after all.
The exhibition was first shown in Hong Kong which was curated by Gregorio Luke, an expert on Mexican and Latin American art and culture, and co-curator Dr. Florian Knothe, Director of the University Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Hong Kong.
According to Carla Martinez, the museum’s Information Officer, the exhibit has been in the works since November 2015.
With the help of the Embassy of Mexico, the presentation of the exhibition finally took place on September 17, 2016 and will last until November 24, 2016.
The Philippines will be last stop of the travelling exhibition, and will be brought back to Los Angeles, California, where the rest of the collection is situated.
