- Archive: Coins from Iran
- Archive: Gamelan
- Archive: Imagining the forest
- Archive: Intimate Portrait
- Archive: Manga
- Archive: Medals of Dishonour
- Archive: Mexican prints 1910
- Archive: Moctezuma
- Archive: Shanghai Treasures
- Archive: Shah 'Abbas
- Archive: Shields from Pacific
- Archive: Staffordshire Hoard
- Archive: Takhti
- Archive: The power of dogu
- Archive: Tutbury Castle
- India Landscape
- Garden and Cosmos
Revolution on paper:
Mexican prints 1910–1960
22 October 2009 – 5 April 2010
The exhibition is the first in Europe to focus on the great age of Mexican printmaking in the first half of the 20th century. It features 130 works by over 40 artists including prints by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Between 1910 and 1920, Mexico was convulsed by a socialist revolution that aimed to topple the elite ruling class and improve conditions for society at large. The left-wing government which emerged laid great emphasis on art as a vehicle to promote the values of the revolution. Walls of public buildings were covered with vast murals, and workshops made prints for mass distribution.
Some of the finest prints from the period were produced by the ‘three greats’ of Mexican art: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
The exhibition includes Rivera’s famous Emiliano Zapata and his horse which has achieved iconic status in 20th-century art. It also features works by artists that rose to prominence after the founding of the Taller del Gráfica Popular (the national print workshop) in 1937, and earlier works by José Guadalupe Posada, who was posthumously recognised by the revolutionaries as the father of printmaking in Mexico.
Diego Rivera, Emiliano Zapata and his
Presented by The Art Fund. © 2009,
Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museum Trust, Mexico D.F./DACS