MUSEUMS: Cheech Marin on Mexican Muralists Los Tres Grandes
Whitney Museum of American Art
02.24.2020“José Clemente Orozco. Diego Rivera. David Alfaro Siqueiros. Mexican muralists known as Los Tres Grandes. They created monumental visions of struggle and heroic triumph, oppression, and popular power. But there is another side to these artists – an untold story of cross-cultural exchange that would alter the course of American art forever.” — Cheech Marin
Now open at the Whitney Museum is the landmark exhibition Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945, running through May 17, 2020. The exhibition explores the impact that Mexican muralists after the Mexican Revolution in 1920 had on American art. In this video preview from the Whitney narrated by the collector, activist, and comedian Cheech Marin, curators Barbara Haskell and Marcela Guerrero, as well as artists Aliza Nisenbaum and Derek Fordjour discuss the exhibition.
From the Whitney:
With more than 200 works by sixty Mexican and U.S. artists, Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945 reorients art history, revealing the transformative impact that the leading Mexican muralists—José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, among others—had on the course of American art. From Jackson Pollock to Jacob Lawrence to Marion Greenwood, artists in the United States were inspired to combine elements of national history and everyday life to create epic narratives of strength and endurance.