Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945

Feb 17, 2020–Jan 31, 2021

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In an effort to unify Mexico after ten years of civil war, the country’s new government sought to construct a shared understanding of Mexican identity and national history. Central to this was the celebration of rural Mexico’s landscape, customs, and people—a sharp repudiation of the veneration of European culture that had existed among Mexico’s ruling class before the revolution. Mexican artists began to portray the country’s Indigenous and largely agrarian population as symbols of national pride and to depict Emiliano Zapata, who led the people’s heroic fight for land reform, as the defining hero of postrevolutionary Mexico. From a contemporary perspective, the idealized portraits of Mexico’s Indigenous peoples created by both Mexican artists and those visiting from abroad may be seen as having reduced their subjects to stereotypes that reinforce their marginalized status within a social system that privileged European heritage. At the time, however, painters, photographers, and filmmakers embraced a romanticized vision of rural Mexico as the embodiment of a simpler, more spiritually authentic way of living in contrast to the alienation and isolation of modern urban and industrial life.

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A painting depicting a man with a black hat and a mustache.

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Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945

Romantic Nationalism and the Mexican Revolution

1

David Alfaro Siqueiros, Zapata, 1931

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Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

On the Hour

Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945

Romantic Nationalism and the Mexican Revolution

1

David Alfaro Siqueiros, Zapata, 1931

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection