After the muralists
I'm definitely learning more about Mexican art, having come to the city with only a vague knowledge of the muralists of the early 19th century - Diego Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros. But as emblematic as they were, elevating the peasant, the revolutionary, the indigenous warrior, once they became the establishment they were set to be challenged. The main permanent exhibit in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in downtown Mexico City has towering canvases of Rivera's communists, capitalists, rich and poor, then the depictions of the Aztec king Cuahtemoc at war with the Spanish, along with other immense, humbling masterpieces. But a few blocks away is the museum of Jose Luis Cuevas, who made his name by breaking with the muralists, saying that their nationalism and idealization of the working clases wasn't what artists should be doing. He went into the ugliness of poverty and class struggle, coming up with paintings and sculptures that revel in the painful and the grotesque. His is just one approach that followed the muralists, but there's more to come in future entries.
