Mexican art: visions of red and gold

A selection of 54 works from various Mexican artists and sculptors appear in the “Visions of Mexican Art” exhibition from February 28 to May 2, 2014 at the Georgian National Museum Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery in Tbilisi, Georgia.

The collection spans the 20^th and 21^st centuries, ranging from the Mexican School of Painting and Scupture; the Rupture; Neo-Mexicanism and others.The Mexican School of Painting and Sculpture movement focused on creating Mexico’s identity through traditional representational genre and landscape painting. A group of artists who began their careers in the 1950s united to form the Rupture, in which the group aimed to create more subjective, internal expressions of their art. During the 1970s the works of collective work groups emerged in which their art is expressed through irony and sarcasm, known as Neo-Mexicanism.

This is the first time that Mexican art, as a collection, has been exhibited in Georgia.

My favourite pieces in the exhibition included:

Good Luck’s Rain (1984) by Mathias Goeritz – low relief on gold and silver striped metal

On the Way to El Dorado (no date) by Betsabee Romero – gold covered tyre

Medusa (1991) by Alberto Castro Lenero – oil on canvas (black head, red background)

Morcilla (no date) by Javier de la Garza – oil on canvas (red with orange background)

Equilibrist doing a Split on a Bull (2000) by Jorge Marin – bronze statue

Steel Cross (no date) by Rufino Tamayo – lithograph on paper (circus ring performer)

The Insomniac’s Notebook No.3 (no date) by Francesco Toledo – mixed technique

Figure with White Vessel (no date) by Martinez Ricardo – oil on canvas

All artwork belongs to the collections of Mexico’s Ministry of Finance and Public Credit.

The Georgian National Museum was established in 1917, and from 2007 it was under the control of the Ministry of Culture and Monuments Protection of Georgia. It has approximately 30,000 items of contemporary Georgian art with periodical exhibitions of Georgian collections as well as collections from foreign countries.

www.museum.ge

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).