As opposed to the consolidated codifications of realism, the desire to open up to new experiences led Mexican artists in the 1960s to meet various trends in international art. It is an orientation that takes R. Tamayo as an example and which is very vast for its duration over time, for the numerous poetic and formal veins, for the different ages of the artists.
These include: in figurative painting, the new humanism by A. Belkin (b.1932), the romanticism of F. Corzas (1936-1983), the baroque of A. Gironella (b.1929), the fantastic realism of F. Toledo (b.1940), expressionism sweet by R. von Gunten (b. 1933) and the more contrasting one by G. Aceves Navarro (b. 1931); in geometric abstractionism, the sculptors J. Mayagoitia (b. 1948), winner in Japan of the Henry Moore Grand Prize awarded by the Chokoku no Mori Bijutsukan of Hakone in 1987, and H. Escobedo (b. 1936); in the non-figuration of a geometric mold, the painting with free backgrounds and ” frayed ” contours by G. Gerzso (b. 1915) and F. García Ponce (1933-1987). This desire to appropriate cosmopolitan languages also includes the graphic work of P. Friedeberg (b.1938), inspired by the perspective ambiguities of the Dutch MC Escher and,
A common feature of artists with such different directions of work is the adoption of international linguistic models to express their inner world: a need that will increasingly assert itself in subsequent generations. In fact, in the Eighties Mexican art deviated to a greater extent from the ideological line of national realism, but also from that of avant-garde modernism: young artists, regardless of objective aspects, tend to the subjective. For Mexico 2010, please check programingplease.com.
A fairly widespread attitude among them emphasizes what is commonly recognized as typical Mexican, already characterized by the engravings of JG Posada, the Taller de Gráfica Popular (founded in 1937) and the Escuela Mexicana formed on muralism and then on the autobiographical surrealism of F. Kahlo (1907-1954), whose house in Coyoacán was inaugurated as a museum (July 12, 1958). The sources from which they draw are the culture of the past and the imaginative everyday life as expressed by popular art and folklore; these artists are unaffected by the tensions originating from political utopias and social denunciations (nourishment of a large part of Mexican realism), which instead in the 1970s produced working groups which borrowed elements from conceptual art.
Other strong and widespread attractions are matter and gestures; a very wide range of figurativism, from art brut to neo- romantic forms, from the recovery of a painting based on wild brushstrokes (in Mexico it has precedents in Orozco and Siqueiros) to decidedly contained figurations: ultimately, the main currents are shattered. The Salón Nacional and that of Aguascalientes are two important stages to make yourself known. In Mexico City, twenty years after the Confrontación 66exhibition, which made it possible to highlight the plurality of interests among the painters of that time, Confrontación 86 was set up with similar objectives, without however triggering the controversy of 1966.
Two important strands of the recovery of Mexican motifs are the figurative work within a fantastic-grim conception of the painter NB Zenil (b.1947) and the settings of Mexico Paláu (b.1934), a joyful revival of colors and popular materials used with artisanal procedures. A contrast comes from Sebastián (b.1947), with an abstract sculpture with geometric shapes entrusted to rationality, and from K. Sakai (b.1927), with a geometric painting of clear paginated (Argentine of Japanese ethnicity, in over fifteen years lived in Mexico, since 1965, has conquered a place in the artistic panorama). Different is the operation of F. Ehrenberg (b. 1943), who takes an interest in consumer images from pop art, attacking them critically.
After the mid-1970s, the US art market turned to Latin America with growing curiosity, prompting them to organize information events. Mexico has received considerable attention, both because it is a neighboring country, both for the influence that its previous art has exercised, and for the abundant presence in the United States of Mexican immigrants and natives.
Since 1965, following the birth of the movement of Chicanos agricultural workers (American citizens of Mexican ethnicity), it is beginning to be understood that the culture of Mexico is well introduced in the US territory. The chicanos, with an epicenter in the border area, have given life to forms of expression that affirm their cultural belonging: bright colors, structural naivety, proliferation of images and forms, the presence of death and love, tested images such as the Madonna of Guadalupe and the skull, already part of folklore and popular art, of religious syncretism, that is, of beliefs and myths of Mexican daily life. Pre-Columbian ancient history (Ch. Félix) and contemporary history are emphasized: R. García and A. Bernal celebrate the Mexican revolution, the leaders of the Chicano movement or the heroes of other oppressed groups, ethnic groups and marginalized classes. Chicano art, which takes up the taste for the mural, is recognized as a movement.
The exhibitions: Rooted visions are an example of the interest developed in the United States for Mexican art . Mexican art today, at the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art (Mocha) in New York in 1988, and Imágenes de México. La contribución de México al arte del siglo XX, at the Dallas Museum in 1988 (from the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt and the Messenpalast in Vienna). Of a different nature is the attention paid by the American feminist movement to the work of F. Kahlo in the seventies, which since then has grown more and more internationally, and in Mexico has become the object of idolatry by artists who they are inspired by them.
Despite the very serious economic crisis the country went through in the 1980s, Mexico City was enriched in 1981 by the Rufino Tamayo Museum (architecture by A. Zabludovsky and T. González de León), dedicated to international contemporary art and consisting of a nucleus of about 300 works donated by Tamayo and belonging to his collection (Picasso, Léger, Ernst, Matta, Miró, Rothko, Pasmore, De Kooning, Tápies, Tamayo, etc.); from the Museo nacional de arte, inaugurated in 1983, which presents a Mexican collection from the pre-Hispanic to the 20th century. Previously, the Carrillo Gil Museum was inaugurated in 1974, dedicated to contemporary Mexican art, and the Sala de arte público Siqueiros, in 1975, which houses works by DA Siqueiros and is located in his house. The Museo de Arte Moderno, open since 1964, collects Mexican art from the 20th century, but includes some 19th century artists.
