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Título: La autenticidad de ocho obras de Rivera en duda
Fecha: 27/10/2001
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The exhibition with paintings of the Mexican painter Diego Rivera presented at the Proa Foundation, in the district of La Boca, carries out by these hours a complex controversy that began when the Aztec magazine specialized in art Millenium doubt of the authenticity of eight of the 36 works that are exhibited in Buenos Aires.
The paintings come from the Museum of Veracruz, Mexico, and integrate a public collection valued in 14 million dollars, that were certified by the National Institute of Fine Arts of Mexico (INBA).
The director of Proa, Adriana Rosenberg, and the Mexican ambassador Rosario Green, who inaugurated the exhibition two weeks ago, agreed that "the best thing is to be careful" and remembered that this is not the first time that the news of a false panel whips the world of the art.
Considered by the Aztecs a national glory, Diego Rivera is not only the more quoted Mexican artist, but also he is copied, as it has happened Masters of the stature of Rembrandt or nearer artists, like Pedro Figari.
A few years ago, the "Rembrandt Research", impelled by the Dutch authorities, forced to change the cataloguing of hundreds of works attributed to the Master.
Now, the crossed fire caused by the work of Rivera will force to review the works that integrate the second more important collection of Mexico, consecrated to the work of the great muralist. Before arriving at the Proa Foundation, the show was exhibited in Venezuela. In our country, it was inaugurated last month by president Fernando de la Rúa.
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Título: Diego Rivera: el carácter de lo americano.
Autor: Julio A. Portela
Fecha: 19/10/2001
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In the most pronounced curvature of the Vuelta de Rocha, accompanying the geographical caprices of the Riachuelo, is built that wide front and two plants building, that belongs, we would say, to an Italian immigrant architecture. Its white walls aspect in a port area, transmits us to the general branch stores or to the principled naval hardware stores of the XXth century.
In that area, now rejuvenated, develops its activities the Proa Foundation, participating of the typical Tourist Card landscape of La Boca. Our visit at late hours (with reflex of lanterns in the black waters of the Riachuelo included) was motivated by the presentation of the exhibition of the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886-1957). The exposition presents works of the collections of the Government of the State of Veracruz, the House Study Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museum and the Diego Rivera Mural Museum. We ask ourselves on why Diego Rivera would participate in an European immigration area, when as painter, drawing, illustrative, muralist and writer showed his attachment to the topics of the American land, to the fecundity and the aboriginal. Perhaps, we find the response in the universality of his art. We would not forget that as an American artist he took part of the European movements, when Paris was the cultural Capital of the West. That's why it didn't surpride us to find a series of landscapes as a synthesis of the principled flourishing plastic trends of the XXth century.
Perhaps because of this, one of his still lifes dated in 1908 has the style and colorful of the paintings of Cézanne; or those others four of cubist construction, accomplished in the period 1914-15 of great formal beauty that we could confuse with works of Juan Gris, among others. Of the same character, participates the set of portraits, accomplished in different eras and techniques.
We recall that in 1921 Rivera returned to Mexico beginning to abandon the classical teaching to approach that popular style of the representative images of the indigenous people.
Because of this, perhaps it may have thrilled us the simplicity of the "Hombre cargando guajolote" (1944) or the "Niño con pollito" both with great tenderness, representing personages of the Mexican daily life.
Also the small reaper formats drawings, workers' scenes in yellow cultivated fields, where the color explodes as in Van Gogh's works. Or those diagrammatical figures of great force, in the water-color "Paleando Nieve" (1956) and coal and water-color "Transportando durmientes" that participate of a socialistic vision of the work.
The importance that we award to these works that are simply in appearance, resides in the quality of the drawings that thereinafter served to Diego Rivera to achieve a monumental expressionism in his mural work. Clear is that we find the outstanding aspects of his work in this last technique, when together with Orozco and Siqueiros, he established the movement of the "Mexican Muralism".
It was precisely in this discipline where his work reached the maximum development: his personages in compact groups, participate of an imagery of the popular rooted in the social with a proletariat under way. These socialistic ideas to those he adhered caused to him in some opportunity the artistic censorship in the United States, when he incorporated into his mural emblematic figures of this idea, works that are not included in this echibition by obvious reasons.
However the exhibition reserved us another great work "Desnudo con girasoles" (1946) where a feminine figure appears in its swarthiness embracing a sunflowers branch to put them in a mud jar.
Complement the exhibition the "Room of the gift" constituted mainly by two installations: the first is formed by an homage altar to Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo with the color of their flowers of
paper, corn ears and candles; the other representing Rivera with formal suit, and bowler and tie shining in the lapel the communist emblem and to Kahlo mimiced in goat with arrows slit in her body.
In the first floor is exhibited the series of photographs that register in the time the affectionate relationship of both personages, that condense the development of their lives, two of the most interesting of the XXth century.
The didactic explanatory panels as well as the exquisite ambient achieved with flowers deserve to be underlined.
It is an exhibition that we recommend to travel, to observe and then muse -if it possible two times- to appreciate the creativity of this Mexican artist participating of the character of the American.
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Título: Vanguardista y popular
Autor: María Teresa Constantín
Fecha: 17/10/2001
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La muestra de Diego Rivera en La Boca constituye una nueva ocasión para el encuentro con la obra de uno de los más importantes artistas de la plástica latinoamericana. Hace poco tiempo la misma fundación había presentado en sus salas la Colección Gelman. En aquella ocasión, el público de Buenos Aires había podido contemplar su obra junto a la de otros artistas, como Frida Kahlo, su célebre pareja. Ahora se trata de una atractiva propuesta centrada exclusivamente en su figura. La exposición ha sido estructurada en tres núcleos. El central lo constituyen 36 obras realizadas entre 1908 y 1956 pertenecientes a las colecciones del Estado de Veracruz. En esos trabajos es posible seguir las preocupaciones de Rivera desde sus primeras obras, en las que se manifiesta la impronta de los maestros mexicanos, que más adelante incorporaría los aportes de la vanguardia parisina.
De esos años, 1913, se presenta el notable Retrato del escultor Oscar Miestchaninoff (ver ilustración): el lenguaje del cubismo faceta las vestimentas y los objetos mientras que la presencia de los modelos de yeso y la mirada perdida del retratado hacen pensar en la melancolía metafísica del italiano Giorgio De Chirico. En 1921 se produce su regreso a México y la confluencia con el proyecto de José Vasconcelos, el célebre secretario de Educación del gobierno revolucionario de Obregón, para quien "el arte es la salvación de México".
El Muralismo, teñido de una fuerte didáctica nacionalista, en el que Rivera trabaja junto a otros artistas como David Siqueiros, pasa a ser el fenómeno dominante en las artes visuales mexicanas. Sin embargo, él se permite continuar con la pintura de caballete. En Desnudo con girasoles, de 1946, la asociación del arte popular y la modernidad resulta en las rotundas formas del desnudo moreno confrontadas con el esplendor del amarillo de las flores.
El segundo núcleo, en la planta alta de la fundación, expone 96 fotografías históricas de la Colección del Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera de Ciudad de México. Finalmente, el último núcleo reúne obras de varios artistas mexicanos y está destinado a resaltar la importancia que el arte popular de su país tuvo en la obra de Rivera. En esas obras, se destaca el atractivo encuentro entre aquellas representaciones tradicionales y su rescate por un artista contemporáneo, Humberto Spíndola.
Spíndola presenta en esta muestra una recreación de los Judas -figuras de papel de varios metros de alto que se quemaban en Sábado Santo- que Rivera había ido coleccionando a lo largo de su vida y de otra tradicional expresión popular mexicana, el Altar de los Muertos, realizada en homenaje a Diego y Frida. En la misma sala hay obras de Guadalupe Posadas que muestran la incidencia del maestro grabador en la iconografía de Rivera.
El núcleo de fotografías pone en evidencia la riqueza del personaje: la intensidad de sus amores con Frida, entre la pasión y la enfermedad, su participación política, el alejamiento del Partido Comunista y su aproximación al trotskismo -una imagen lo muestra junto al líder ruso exiliado y al poeta surrealista André Breton-. Polémico, apasionado, Rivera surge de esta muestra en toda su humana complejidad y en la calidad indiscutible de su obra.
COMPATIBLE:
Una mezcla perfecta entre las vanguardias europeas y la singularidad mexicana, próxima a Frida Kahlo y David Alfaro Siqueiros.
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Título: Gran elogio de los "judas"
Autor: Diego Rivera
Fecha: 09/10/2001
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When a country has a very old plastic culture and has produced thousands, hundreds of thousands of masterpieces, it is left in the "memory of the space" a heap of potentiality of the production of art in the majority of the individuals that compose that country.
In spite of all the historical vicissitudes through which it happens, which their transitory or stable opresores deal with to suppress the collective genius that it has, the inheriting people of the aesthetic gift finds occasion to show it, sometimes in the most unexpected way.
Recently, a science man, the professor De Terra, found in the subsoil of Mexico a tooth of elephant carved in the shape of an human foot; it is a refined work of art of a great conception and execution that the artist found the way to take advantage of the accidents to express the tendons of the foot and the enamel of the tooth for the quality of the nails of his knuckles. The antiquity of that work of art, scientifically induced and deduced, is about twenty thousand years. Five thousand years ago, the men of the Valley of Mexico, testifies the temple of Cuicuilco (place where they sung and danced) and the contemporary ceramics of it, found under the basalt of the Pedregal of San Angel, already had a culture that allowed them to produce works of art of an extraordinary purity; consequently, the potentiality inherited by the people of Mexico is very great for the plastic production of art. Naturally, minor is the "sophistication" produced in the Mexican by more recent imported cultures, greater is the quality of its spontaneous aesthetic production. Within that phenomenon appeared, among other objects of art, the "judas". The particularity is that, the people who build them are constructors of those figures only during the days that precede the Holy Saturday, the final day of the Greater Week, when they must be destroyed by the rockets. The crowd, driven crazy, collects the pieces of art works that have escaped to the outbreaks and the flames. They are works of art destined to being sacrificed, for joy and ferocious diversion of the town that produces them; they have then, a wonderful destiny. They are conceived and executed with an absolute disinterestedness. They are constructed by carpenters, blacksmiths, tailors, shoemakers, retailers, shippers, farmers, cultivators of flowers, etc., every day of the year that are not those that precede the one of the sacrifice. And the burners of the judas destroy in them the image of somebody that they hate: sometimes the figure is an admirable and true portrait of a person that they want to see burned in his image; but most of the times they are only expressive creations. The presence of the Devil, the Death is frequent, the beloved skull, the invariable lover of the Mexican people, whom already adorned, in multiple images, its Teocallis thousands of years. The plastic value of the judas is enormous, it is doubtless that like plastic object, joint expression of structure, forms and color, in the art of present Mexico, are doubtlessly most valuable. Their structures are covered with humble matter, of extreme fragility: cheap paper, almost always of old newspapers, establishes the surface of its great forms and magnificent planes, without losing nothing of the essential of the structure. Those planes are of color, positioned with courage and an extraordinary sobriety, that individualizes and intensifies the expression of the volumes. The personification of the structure is made sometimes through a molded head, modeled with paste cardboard, but also, some times, the heads are constructed with the same structure or "frame" and specially then they reach an expressionist power and an amazing plastic value. They are a great lesson for painters and sculptors; great names and great European men in the arts have taken advantage of them with ability and dissimulation. Between us, the artist who debt to the judas the most, and this is said entirely in his honor, is Rufino Tamayo; he has taken advantage of the lesson of form and color. Some years ago, with a brave frankly and great honesty, in a exhibition that he improvised in the empty commercial avenue Francisco I. Madero, he placed small judas hung between his paintings. Then almost nobody understood the value of the affirmation that the painter with this act did. It is to be desired that, finally, our plastic artists know to see and to take for itself the admirable lesson and extraordinary beauty of the judas, probably the best contemporary plastic of anonymous production, that is to say, really human and universal, by local and national.
* Text published in Spaces. Integral magazine of Architecture and Plastic Arts, Mexico, in June of 1949. The exhibition of Diego Rivera in the Proa Foundation (Pedro de Mendoza 1929), follows until October.
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Título: ¿Riveras falsos? Polémica tan vieja como cuestionable
Autor: Ana Martínez Quijano
Fecha: 08/10/2001
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¿Es verdad que hay pinturas falsas de Diego Rivera en la Fundación Proa? «Para comenzar, si alguien dice que esas obras son falsas tendrá que probarlo», responde la embajadora de México en nuestro país, Rosario Green, quien tuvo a su cargo el Ministerio de Cultura y conoce a fondo una controversia que se remonta a la década del ochenta.
Diversos medios reprodujeron en estos días una nota publicada en la revista mexicana «Milenio», que bajo el título «Bajo sospecha» pone en duda la autenticidad de ocho pinturas del mexicano que llegaron a la fundación de La Boca desde el Museo de Arte Veracruzano. En realidad, se trata de una vieja polémica, y de paso por Buenos Aires el ministro de Educación de México, Reyes Tamez , le aclaró a este diario: «La publicación no aporta nada nuevo sobre un asunto que tiene larga data». La exposición entera cuenta con el aval de INBA, el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes porque las pinturas forman parte del patrimonio del Gobierno de México, pero la crítica de arte argentina radicada en México, Raquel Tibiol, y el restaurador Tomás Zurián, aducen en el artículo que la colección incluye obras de dudosa calidad, «toscamente falsificadas».
Consultada la embajadora Green sobre las posibles razones que impulsan a poner en el candelero una discusión que requiere de largas investigaciones académicas para emitir un veredicto, y justo cuando las obras están en el extranjero, momento que al menos, se puede considerar inoportuno, respondió: «Las pinturas se exhibieron prime-ro en Venezuela y llama la atención que cuando llegan a la Argentina, Tibol saque a relucir una polémica que sostiene desde hace años con la ex directora del Instituto de Cultura Veracruzano, Ida Rodríguez Prampolini».
Entretanto, en México, la nueva directora del Instituto, Leticia Perlasca, recogió el guante y ha pedido un dicta-men sobre las pinturas que impugna Tibol . Las 36 obras del Museo de Veracruz que se exhiben en Proa están valuadas en 15 millones de dólares, fueron prestadas por 150.000 dólares y conforman la colección más importante de Rivera que pertenece al Estado.
La más completa es la del Museo Dolores Olmedo Pati-ño, pero es privada y su hijo y único heredero, Carlos Phillips Olmedo, cuando vino a negociar el préstamo de las obras de Rivera para la exposición que el Museo Costantini realizará el año próximo, advirtió a este diario que el tema que mejor domina son los números.
Ante la demanda de las pinturas del muralista en todo el mundo (este año ocuparon un sitial de honor en la Plaza San Marcos durante la Bienal De Venecia), Phillips dijo que no está dispuesto a dejar vacío por mucho tiempo el museo de su madre. Pero se sabe que pide fortunas por el préstamo de obras. Por otra parte, la directora de Proa, Adriana Rosemberg, cuidadosa de la trayectoria de la institución que inauguró con una memorable exposición de Tamayo a la que asistió el presidente de México, considera que es imprescindible que los responsables estudien las obras.
Manuel Ameztoy , encargado de la comunicación, atribuye la amplia cobertura que le dedicaron los medios locales a un destacado de la publicación de «Milenio», donde dice que las presuntas obras falsas están en la Argentina. Curio-samente, no tuvo eco otra nota de «Milenio» del 23 de julio pasado, que anunciaba: «Al mural de 'Ejercicio Plástico' realizado por Siqueiros en Buenos Aires sólo le quedan dos o tres años de vida si continúa acelerándose su ya grave deterioro».
Green, que inauguró la exposición de Rivera junto al presidente Fernando de la Rúa , agrega: «No me toca a mí decidir si las obras son genuinas. Pero es la primera vez que una muestra acompañada por fotografías que son verdaderos documentos, exhibe una imagen tan humana de Rivera, inmerso en la vida cotidiana y en el contexto cultural que lo rodeaba -recreado en el delirio artesanal del maestro Espíndola-. Y las pinturas muestran el Diego universal, tan parisiense y tan contagiado por las escuelas del momento».
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Título: ¿Son falsas ocho obras del mexicano Diego Rivera?
Fecha: 02/10/2001
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"This is a discussion between historians, something very common in the art, that it is full of cases like this one. The collection of Diego Rivera that we have is a public collection, which officially belongs to the state of Veracruz. And furthermore Rivera ihas been declared National Patrimony of Mexico", with those words to Clarín, the chairwoman of the Proa Foundation, Adriana Rosenberg, responded yesterday to the polemics unleashed by the Mexican magazine Millennium. The publication doubt on the genuineness of eight of the 36 works of the Mexican artist that are exhibited in Buenos Aires.
According to the publication, that consulted art critics, several of the works that are in the Buenos Aires gallery "are obviously false".
The collection, inaugurated September 17th, is the second in importance of the work of the Mexican artist. It contains projects of the initial training of the painter, and also the eight works that are questioned. "They have atypical characteristics and an evident smaller quality", indicated a document elaborated by the restorer Tomás Zurián, at the Millennium magazine.
In that vision also coincides the critic Raquel Tibol: "They are evidently untruthful, abruptly counterfeit", indicated. The paintings referred by the experts are: Retrato de la madre del artista, Campesino cargando guajolote, Niño con pollito, and Mujer con flores, as well as four drawings.
The works, explains the magazine, were incorporated to the collection in the past decade when a governor of Veracruz began to buy, "with a certain neurotic slope", projects of the muralist. The exhibition that will be opened until the end of this month is a collection of 36 paintings, 96 photographs and a recreation of the icons of the Mexican popular culture that surrounded the life of the artist, who was born in 1886, in Guanajuato, and died of cancer, in 1957.
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Título: Ocho obras de Rivera expuestas en Buenos Aires podrían ser falsas
Autor: Pedro Lipcovich
Fecha: 02/10/2001
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"Don't get excited with that painting, it can be false!", it will be alarmed some meticulous visitor upon traveling the exhibition of the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera that is presented in Buenos Aires. Eight of 36 exposed works would not be authentic, according to prestigious specialist statements that were published yesterday in Mexico. The polemics, as the work of Rivera, has unequivocally Latin American elements: from the dispute between two Mexican official institutions on who must demonstrate the genuineness, until the history of the governing that according to a researcher "with certain almost neurotic slope" have bought works to make a great museum, but without enough genuineness guarantees.
The set, appraised in 14,900,000 dollars, is exposed in the Proa Foundation, in La Boca, and it is composed by 18 oils, 14 drawings, two temperas and two water-colors. Yesterday, the Mexican magazine Millennium published statements of Tomás Zurián, one of the most important restorers of the work of Rivera; according to those, eight of the pieces are of doubtful genuineness "by their atypical characteristics and their evident minor quality". The critic Raquel Tibol, Argentine based in Mexico, very prestigious, author of the book Diversities in the art of the XXth century, asserted that it is considered " evidently untruthful and abruptly counterfeit work".
The collection, that belongs to the Mexican state of Veracruz, is one of the two most important of the artist, that lived among 1886 and 1957. It includes representative projects from his beginnings until the last works. According to Tibol, the untruthful pieces incorporation took place in the decade of 1980, when the governor Agustín Acosta Lagunes, projecting to build a vast Art Museum, was devoted to buy work of Rivera "with an almost neurotic slope". He entrusted the procurements to the Chilean Alvaro Covasevic, who, without experience in the subject, would have traveled to auctions and collectors not always reliable. The collection remained under the custody of the Veracruz Institute of Culture (IVEC). Zurián recommended that a commission is constituted. These specialists should "analyze, prosecute and study" the works with the current technological resources and he affirmed that a few years ago was requested to IVEC to form that commission. Página/12 interrogated Leticia Perlasca, general directress of the IVEC: "Our certainty of the fact that the works are original is given by the National fine arts Institute (INBA), the maximum authority of Mexico in the topic: they should evaluate and certify the authenticity".
However, Walther Boelsterly, director of Conservation of the Artistic Patrimony of the INBA, had supported that "the government of Veracruz must demonstrate the genuineness of the paintings exhibited". "They must give the support from which the companies assure us the works, answered the directress of the IVEC. In any case, if they require that a commission analyzes the works, we have no objection." Adriana Rosenberg, director of Proa Foundation, explained that "the works of Diego Rivera are patrimony of the State of Mexico, so they cannot be sold abroad: this implies an official register of each one, in charge of the INBA. The trip of the collection that we exhibited was authorized by the INBA, that sent a delegate "to control the conditions of the place; that specialist will return to withdraw the works when the exhibition ends(28 of this month). All the pieces are currently patrimony of the Mexican State".
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Título: Rivera y su circunstancia
Fecha: 24/09/2001
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In the frame of the celebrations organized by Mexico in the occasion of the anniversary of its Independence and with the presence of its ambassador in Buenos Aires and of the Argentine President, it was inaugurated the exhibition of Diego Rivera at Proa Foundation. An assembly of almost forty paintings, in addition to a hundred of photos and evocative objects of the artist gives a panorama of how it is inserted his personality and his work in Mexico in the first half of the XXth century. The exhibition includes a painting section with 36 works made between 1908 and 1956. They belong to the Collection of the State of Veracruz and they reflect the different periods of the artist from his studies, through his residence in Europe and the cubist experience, and his return to Mexico to completely turn upside down to a social and militant painting recovering the native; from his integration to the muralist program of Jose Vasconcelos to his last production. The second section of the exhibition at Proa, presents one hundred photographs of the Collection of the Museum House Study Diego Rivera of the Federal District where, through the registry of different moments caught by the camera, we can see an approach to the personage of Diego Rivera surrounded by personalities that affected his life. Some of these documents are dyed of political content, others are more personal, like the intense relation that united him to Frida Kahlo, and other reunite both, like the photo where Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo are in a comunist manifestation in 1931. In addition, works of great photographers like Edward Weston and Ansel Adams can be admired, true icons of the social American photography of the first half of the XXth century. The exhibition also includes a special section, the World of Diego Rivera, which presents different elements from the Mexican popular culture like the Judas collected by the artist (mounted by Humberto Spindola) and an altar of died in honor to Diego and Frida. Finally, the Catrina section, taken from the popular icon of Jose Guadalupe Posadas, reproduces the mural "Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central".
Beyond the anecdotal section where the personage is presented, it is in the exposed work where there are some paintings that translate the power of the great muralist, as "Desnudo con girasoles" and "Campesino cargando guajolote". In those paintings Rivera has left the European influence (there are works of his extremely interesting cubist period) and it appears the forcefulness of the bodies and the colors.
Diego Rivera shared with some painters and writers of his time the sensitivity of those who through the artistic expression, made specific a revolutionary vision of the art. His life and his work are intimately associate, and that is why Proa Foundation has decided to show Diego Rivera not only as one of the maximum Mexican muralists, together with Orozco and Siqueiros, but in the deep complexity of this personage and his circumstance, a fighter for the arts and the culture.
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Título: Diego Rivera en Proa
Autor: Laura Feinsilber
Fecha: 19/09/2001
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Proa Foundation presents the exhibition "Diego Rivera". There are 36 ridge works, which belongs to the collection of the Government of the State of Veracruz. Rivera donated some of this works in reply to a scholarship that was given to him in 1907. Of this time are "Barranca de Mixcoac" and "Pico de Orizaba" (1906), influenced by the lessons of Jose M. Velazco who introduced the tendencies of Corot, Courbet and the school of Barbizon. Once installed in Spain in 1907, he contacts the Spanish vanguard and in 1909 he goes to Paris from where he travels to important museums of Belgium, Germany, Italy and London. In Paris he paints "Retrato de Angelina Beloff", Russian painter with whom he contracts marriage. Work of soft and transparent tonalities, of symbolist character, and that summarizes his European experiences until then. This formative-imitative period culminates in 1910 when he fleetingly returns to Mexico to expose his works in the celebrations of the Centenary of Independence, made with great pomp. But in June 1911 he was again in Europe and he paints in Catalonia "Tierra quemada de Cataluña". Rivera was developing himself through different styles. Thus, "Paisaje de Toledo" (1913) presents an almost geometric synthesis of the landscape, very far from the realistic character of his first works. "Retrato del escultor Oscar Miestchaninoff" (1913) is one of his first cubist works. The figure that is in first plane exhibits an extensive range of tonalities, recreates the atmosphere of a factory with sculpture and still life at the bottom, whose color appears attenuated. "Naturaleza muerta con botella y vaso", 23 x 34,5 cm is a true cubist jewel from 1915. It is important to emphasize that in this time he painted the extraordinary "Retrato de Ramon Gómez de la Serna", ex- collection Plácido Arango (Madrid), at the moment in the collection of the Malba, recently inaugurated. It is indeed Gómez of the Serna who describes as "riverismo" the form to approach the cubism, "an hybrid cubist-futurism, with the presence of the color". The other cubist works grouped with very good curatorial criterion are also amazing: among them "Naturaleza muerta con botella" (1914), drawing, papier-collé and gouache, headed by a very cézannian work, "Naturaleza muerta", whose date of accomplishment, 1908 or 1918, is still discussed. Rivera's figure attracted the attention of the conspicuous representatives of the artistic world, whose lessons upset fanatically in their work. One says that "he sold his soul to the painting".
"Desnudo", from 1919, shows him leaving the cubism, retaking the pleasure of the material and sublimating the sensual forms. He leaves Paris and he travel through Italy with Siqueiros, that speaks to him on the Mexican Revolution, on the people in arms, on the importance of a nationalistic and monumental art with a political function. The apotheosis of the Mexican muralism will be at that time, represented by Orozco (1883-1949), Siqueiros (1896-1974) -editor of the famous Manifesto of the Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors- and Diego Rivera (1886-1957), whose muralist task initiated in 1922 extends until 1952. He returns to Mexico in 1921, rediscovering his country and the aesthetic values of the native. There are several portraits, a style that he frequented throughout his career, among them "Retrato de la Sra. Dreyfus" (1927), "Retrato de Hombre" (1936) or "Retrato de actriz" (1948), this last one very bound to the designs that appears in his murals. "Desnudo con girasoles" (1946), a monumental work, belongs to a series of saleswomen of flowers that incarnate the essence of the mother Earth, in a chromatic resistance between the exuberant sunflowers and the exuberance of the brown feminine body. Several drawings presented in the exhibition were made in Moscow in 1956, just a year before his death: "Transportando durmientes" and "Paleando nieve" are related to the work of the man, in a very sketched vision.
In another room of the ground floor, "The world of Diego Rivera" appears. He was a great collector of popular art, and it is displayed an "Offering of dead in tribute Diego and Frida", an altar of offerings with the meals and elements preferred in life by the deceased. Humberto Spindola, Mexican artist, has reconstructed the Judas of almost 4 mts height that originally were burned during Holy Saturday. In the explosion they released gifts that people gathered. It is also exhibited a partial reproduction of the famous mural of 1947 "Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central". The Calavera Catrina (the death) is represented as the central figure, dedicated to Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913), considered the artist who marks the breaking with the cultural colonialism and that made an art for consumption of the poor people.
In the superior floor of Proa, "Frida and Diego: The life in photos", documents through 96 photographs taken by Guillermo Kahlo, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Eduardo Weston, Ansel Adams, among others, the different historical moments of intense political content, their daily life, the love and the death of this mythical couple.
Diverse media have reproduced articles published in Mexico in which the authenticity of 8 of 36 exposed works is questioned. The Proa Foundation has sent us the corresponding material in which the controversy untied about this collection estimated in 14.900.000 of dollars is indicated. Tomás Zurián, the most remarkable restorer of the muralist, whose creations have been surrounded by scandals or falsifications, suggested several years ago the conformation of an interdisciplinary commission in order to analyze the assembly of works, commission that could not be made specific because many collectors and institutions elude the problem, because they don't want to reach to the conclusion that their works are false. Proa Foundation, Av. Pedro de Mendoza 1929, of Tuesday to Sundays, 11 to 19 hs.
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Título: La exposición del maestro del muralismo se podrá ver hasta fines de octubre
Fecha: 18/09/2001
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Ver nota original (Diario Clarín )
The passion by the existence and the coexistence with the disease; the orthodox militancy and the rupture with the dogma; the erotic love and the comradeship without body; the commitment with the others and the beauty as an object of daily production; the immoderation of the nature and the construction of the cultural landscape; millenarian Aztec history and modernity. Tracks of the past, signals of the present and intuitions of the future.
The life of the Mexican painter Diego Rivera is crossed by an infinite range of polarities. And his work, flood of contradictions and shades, are a visual gallery of the intensities whereupon a man is able to live.
Yesterday, in the Proa Foundation (Av. Pedro de Mendoza 1929) the Diego Rivera Exhibition was opened, a collection of 36 paintings, 96 photographies and one recreation of the icons of the Mexican popular culture that surrounded the life of the artist who was born in 1886, in Guanajuato, and died of cancer, in 1957, after spending a year in Moscow with the double intention of curing himself and to accede to the art of the socialist realism.
The exhibition is a route through a great part of the production of the Master of the muralism. And it is divided in three sections: one conformed by the works that belong to the collection of the state of Veracruz, made between 1908 and 1956, that reflects his premature initial studies at the National School of Fine Arts, his stays in Catalonia and Paris, the cubist experience and the return to the native land with the recovery and amplification of the native thing. The second segment corresponds to the historical photos that reflect the loving relation between Diego and Frida Kahlo and belong to the House Study San Angel, where both lived in the residential and calm district of Coyoacán, in the Federal District, and that today is a museum that receives hundreds of tourists every day. The third section rescues some symbols of the Mexican popular culture articulated tpgether with the personal experiences of the painter. Thus, for example, an altar of dead appears in memory of the couple of artists and the judas recreate those that were in their house-study.
Author of a monumental work, Diego Rivera was a central figure in the Mexican political-cultural life between the 20s and the 50s. His first works have a doubtless landscaping mark, consequence of his learning with the painter Jose Maria Velazco. In 1907 he crosses the Atlantic thanks to the stimulus and the economic support of the governor of Veracruz, Teodoro Dehesa, and in Toledo, Spain, he is dazzled with the painting of El Greco. Two years later he met the Russian painter Angelina Beloff, who becomes his first wife. In 1910, Rivera chooses as place of residence Montparnasse, Paris, and he is dedicated to investigate the expressive and technical possibilities of the cubism. Once finalized the World War I, he returns to the French capital to argue with Picasso, Braque and Modigliani, referents of the pictorial vanguard. There is a fact that defines the election of Rivera towards the muralism. One is his trip to Italy between 1920 and 1921 when he discovers the fresh airs of the "quatrocento" and conceives the alternative of painting gigantic works, in accordance with the immensity of the Mexican territory. In 1922, the plastic begins to work in a first mural that reveals the great influence of the medieval art. But he will have to wait a few years to free them and to shape his painting to the fresh air in which the constructivism, the amplitude of the toscan artists of 1400, the verticality of the works of El Greco and the colors and textures of the Mexican popular art coexist. All that do it with an unique seal. The decade of the 20s is profuse in graphical production: Diego creates engravings, illustrations of books, posters. The Secretariat of Public Education and the stairs of the Nacional Palace in the Aztec capital became the seat of his murals. Of course, the artistic creation is not the only object of his passion. His desire at the service of politics and his love for women multiply his interests. He takes part of the Union of Painters created by his compatriot David Siqueiros, he founds the Mexican Communist Party, and breaks with it after knowing the Union Soviet, he travels to the United States with Kahlo and prepares the murals of the Detroit Institute of Art contracted by Henry Ford. After a complicated pass by New York -he includes the figure of Lenin in a mural for the Rockefeller Center and the mural is destroyed- he returns to Mexico. There, he starts again with the small ridge painting and he initiates a series of pictures of emblematic figures. Diego fits himself in the IV International Socialist and invites Leon Trotsky to his house. The death of Frida, in 1954, submerges him in a state of great fragility. Patient, he travels to Moscow, he marries Emma Hurtado and spends his last days between his houses of San Angel and Acapulco. The accomplishment of the Exhibition Diego Rivera started yesterday and can be seen until October 28th.
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Título: Se abrió la muestra de Diego Rivera
Fecha: 18/09/2001
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Ver nota original (Diario La Nación )
Thirty six paintings, photographies and objects compose the exhibition dedicated to the Mexican painter Diego Rivera, that opens his doors to the public today at Proa Foundation, located in the colorful district of La Boca. The exhibition, organized in the occasion of the anniversary of the independence of Mexico, was inaugurated by the president Fernando de la Rúa.
The paintings show the Rivera of the social thematic, the cubism and that later was completely introduced in the politics of his time. In the first floor of PROA a series of 96 photos can be seen, that remarks the highlights of the life of Rivera. His third wife, the famous artist Frida Kahlo, had a great presence.
The exhibition allows to appreciate the ways that followed the painter of Guanajuato with his art, to know images of his life and some of the icons of the Mexican native culture that he tried to rescue.
The exhibition consists on three parts. The most important is the assembly of 36 works of the collection of the Museum of Orizaba, in Veracruz. In these works the different stages of the artist are appraised: his studies in the Academy of San Carlos, his residences in Catalonia (Spain) and Paris, his cubist experience, the native recovery of the Mexican art and the muralism. In addition, in one of the rooms a "dead altar" has been mounted, dedicated to Rivera and Kahlo, with images of saints and objects of their studio.
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Título: Diego Rivera o la reconstrucción de un relato
Autor: Claudia Groesman
Fecha: 18/09/2001
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Ver nota original (Revista VoxVirtual 4 )
La muestra ensaya una topografía visual del itinerario de Rivera, una ruta por donde transitar que se imagina a sí misma homologando la propia mirada a la del artista. Encarnamos esta suerte de cámara subjetiva, descubriendo diferentes momentos de su producción, habitando un punto de vista que se transforma cada vez, que se bifurca y se continúa en el tiempo.
Atravesando los espacios que separan una obra de otra, podemos intuir los pasajes, allí donde aparece el silencio. La organización de la muestra nos ofrece por corte momentos hilvanados en un suceder histórico, en el que confluyen y se entrecruzan discursos que construyen un cuerpo.
El artista se sumerge en su tiempo abonando un territorio que se nutre de las corrientes vanguardistas para luego acreditarlo a la búsqueda de un decir propio. La serie de naturalezas muertas, los paisajes y los retratos dan cuenta de la retroalimentación entre la investigación plástica y las propias marcas, las heredadas de sus ancestros y de su cultura, que irán paulatinamente construyendo un estilo.
El espesor de la búsqueda de Rivera se manifiesta en la articulación de la experimentación del lenguaje, la ocupación por retratar lo mexicano y el contenido ideológico de la obra, que encontrarán su síntesis en el muralismo, su devenir épico-monumental.
Se nos ofrecen las piezas para armar el puzzle cronológico de imágenes: registros fotográficos de personajes, lugares, situaciones, retratos de Diego y Frida; en un plano que transcurre paralelo al de la obra y aporta datos objetivos de su vida privada y pública. Esta escritura fotográfica completa la ilusión de retomar con fidelidad el trayecto vital del artista.
La fe con la que cada espectador participa de la reconstrucción del relato hace circular un espacio vacío, la pieza faltante por donde volver a inscribir el propio texto.
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