Crossing Borders: Mexican Modernist Prints

This is the BMA’s first exhibition to highlight the Museum’s rarely shown collection of prints and drawings by renowned Mexican artists of the 20th century.

Many of the 12 artists represented, such as Los Tres Grandes—Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros—are celebrated as the leading proponents of Mexican modernism. Through expressive figurative imagery, the works of these artists often underscored the political, social, and cultural shifts taking place in Mexico after the Mexican Revolution.

Approximately 30 prints, drawings, and photographs will be on view, including recent acquisitions such as Siqueiros’ lithographs Reclining Nude and Black Woman, as well as Elizabeth Catlett’s My right is a future of equality with other Americans from The Negro Woman series. Catlett created this major series of linoleum cuts in 1946–47 while working in Mexico City at the influential printmaking collective and community of artists known as the Taller de Gráfica Popular (or People’s Graphic Workshop)

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website 

Image: Diego Rivera. Zapata. 1932. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Blanche Adler. BMA 1932.28.5. © 2017 Diego Rivera/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico.