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

Feb 17, 2020–Jan 31, 2021

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Siqueiros returned to the United States in 1934 and again in 1936, both times to New York. During the latter stay, he established the Experimental Workshop near Union Square as a laboratory for modern aesthetic techniques, keeping with his conviction that artists could not make revolutionary art using the techniques and materials of the past—that they “must live our marvelous dynamic age,” as he put it. Under Siqueiros’s direction, workshop members experimented with unorthodox materials and new ways of creating art, among them pouring and dripping paint onto canvas tacked to the floor. The workshop had a powerful effect on many artists, in particular Jackson Pollock, whose participation in the workshop introduced him to the possibilities of controlled accidents long before his adoption of the “drip technique” in 1947, which would make him one of the most renowned artists in postwar America.

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An abstract painting with strokes of black and primary colors.

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

Siqueiros and the Experimental Workshop

8

Jackson Pollock, Landscape with Steer, c. 1936–37

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On the Hour

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

Siqueiros and the Experimental Workshop

8

Jackson Pollock, Landscape with Steer, c. 1936–37

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection