Museo Nacional de Arte

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, a través del Museo Nacional de Arte, y con el encomiable apoyo de su Patronato, presentan la exposición temporal
Diálogos de vanguardia. La Colección Pearlman en el Museo Nacional de Arte

Vincent van Gogh, Amedeo Modigliani, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet y Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Diego Rivera, Joaquín Clausell, Roberto Montenegro, Gerardo Murillo (Dr. Atl), José Clemente Orozco, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Félix Parra y Germán Gedovius.

Una obra de cada artista, todas en un mismo lugar: el MUNAL.
 

 
Inauguración: jueves, 12 de septiembre.
19:00 a 21:00 h
#EntradaLibre, no es necesario el registro previo

 Toma en cuenta la siguiente información:

-El museo abre de martes a domingo, de 10:00 a 17:30 h

-Nos ubicamos en Tacuba 8, en el Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México.

-Los boletos para el museo se compran el día de tu visita, directamente en la taquilla del museo. No hay compra anticipada, ni reservación.

-Te recomendamos no asistir con mochilas ni bultos grandes.

-Recuerda que no se permite el acceso con ningún tipo de alimento o bebida.

-Si pagas el permiso de fotografías en la taquilla, toma en cuenta que no se permiten sesiones, tampoco el uso de flash, tripié, vestuario, ni utilería.

-Trae ropa y zapatos cómodos.

Importante:

*Para asegurar una visita cómoda para todos nuestros visitantes, no están permitidos los recorridos guiados externos por la exposición.

**Agenda de visitas grupales nocturnas y en horario especial: yunuen.morales@patronatomunal.org

La Secretaría de Cultura, a través del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, tiene como tarea primordial difundir el patrimonio artístico nacional, fomentando, entre otras actividades, la investigación continua y la preservación de la memoria de los creadores mexicanos mediante sus obras. En este sentido, agradece profundamente a la maestra Patricia Salas Velasco la generosa donación de 126 piezas de Adolfo Mexiac (Cuto de la Esperanza, Michoacán, México, 1927 – Cuernavaca, Morelos, México, 2019), mismas que, desde este 2024, se integran a los acervos del Museo Nacional de Arte y del Museo Nacional de la Estampa.

Con este marco de referencia, ambos recintos museales han preparado la exposición temporal Mexiac. Legado de libertad. Esta muestra, conformada por una selección de 84 piezas, entre dibujos y estampas, rinde homenaje al legado de este gran pintor, muralista y grabador. La propuesta curatorial invita a transitar por su carácter libre y creativo, que aborda por igual temas introspectivos y bucólicos, como algunos otros asociados a la migración y los movimientos sociales, cuya vigencia da cuenta de nuestra naturaleza humana en constantes luchas y trashumancias. Por ello, cada trazo, línea y golpe de tinta reflejan, de forma contundente, su compromiso social y la posibilidad de emerger fuera del eje del tiempo, como mensajes que se resignifican en el presente.

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, a través del Museo Nacional de Arte, presentan la exposición temporal Germán List Arzubide. En las letras está la vida, que da cuenta de un personaje vanguardista, referente para la vida cultural del siglo XX en México.

La muestra busca reconocer la gran influencia de Germán List Arzubide, quien estuvo vinculado con el desarrollo cultural, ideológico, social y pedagógico en nuestro país. Con cerca de 300 piezas, el público podrá admirar obra artística, fotografías, marionetas, bibliografía, documentos manuscritos y correspondencia, que rinden homenaje al literato nacido en Puebla.

La exhibición se enriquece con piezas de Diego Rivera, Aurora Reyes, Ezequiel Negrete Lira, Juan Leonardo Cordero, Francisco Arturo Marín, Luis Arenal, Isaías Cervantes, Enrique Gottdiener y Ramón Alva de la Canal, entre otros.

Visita esta exposición en el segundo piso del MUNAL, recinto de la #RedMuseosINBAL, hasta el 31 de marzo de 2025.

Exposición temporal

Ángeles. Las huestes celestiales en la Tierra

Del 16 de mayo al 8 de septiembre de 2024.

DIRECCIÓN

Museo Nacional de Arte

Tacuba 8, Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México.

Martes a Domingo, 10:00 a 17:30 h

Boletos directamente en la taquilla del museo.

 

 
El programa MUNAL+Visitas ofrecerá recorridos entre semana por la exposición.

Más informes en: visitasguiadas@munal.inba.gob.mx

Recorridos especiales por la exposición.

Informes, costos y agenda: yunuen.morales@munal.inba.gob.mx

 

Visitas guiadas externas:

Las visitas guiadas externas están permitidas de martes a viernes, en horario regular del museo. Los fines de semana estarán restringidas para permitir el flujo de todos nuestros visitantes por las salas.

Dos Líneas (Fe). Stefan Brüggemann

En esta propuesta, Stefan Brüggemann (Ciudad de México, México, 1975) alude al poder, religión, historia. El cuerpo de obra, realizado ex profeso para este espacio, propone un diálogo «neobarroco» que se nutre, en una suerte de espejo, con el rico simbolismo de la pintura virreinal que resguardan las salas del museo. El acervo sirvió como catalizador de un viaje introspectivo que se materializa en esta muestra, anclada en lo más hondo de la herencia personal del artista.

En este proceso reflexivo, los recuerdos de infancia de Stefan y el quehacer profesional de sus padres, dedicados a la arqueología, fueron particularmente relevantes. Cuando era un niño y, al observar por primera vez las filacterias [cintas con inscripciones dentro de la obral de los lienzos novohispanos, descubrió que la pintura puede contener palabras. Esta revelación lo marcó profundamente y se convirtió en la vértebra de toda su producción artística. Brüggemann plasma en estas obras aquella compleja amalgama de ideas en las que abreva culturalmente su memoria. Son lienzos de gran for mato recubiertos con hoja de oro, algunos con plata, donde pinta sencillas cruces con aerosol. La cruz, en medio de los grandes campos dorados, da como resultado una suerte de minimalismo donde el espectador se enfrenta a la reflexión, alejado de cualquier dogma.

La hoja metálica permite al artista pintar reflejando, es decir, adaptándose perfectamente a la superficie cuando refracta la luz, proyectando así su propia gestualidad. Su elección va más allá de lo meramente formal, pues aporta un importante componente simbólico, relativo a la divinidad, el poder, la riqueza, e incluso, la avaricia. En contraste, la materialidad empleada en los grandes bastidores genera amplios campos monocromos que dotan a las pinturas de una estética cercana a lo industrial.

Las cruces aparentan ser dos simples líneas que se cruzan pero, en ocasiones, esta encrucijada es tan fortuita como los dos linajes, el indígena y el español, que se encontraron para conformar la herencia cultura de nuestro país.

Inauguración:
jueves 1 de febrero, 19 h.
Entrada libre.

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, a través del Museo Nacional de Arte, presentan la exposición temporal
"Petrona Viera. Una creación sin fin”.

La muestra es testimonio de una época donde la reflexión social y el rol de la mujer se reflejaron en nuevos lenguajes, herencia de las vanguardias de comienzos del siglo XX.

I N A U G U R A C I Ó N

Miércoles 29 de noviembre, 19 h.
Entrada libre.

Exposición temporal

Santos Balmori (1898-1992). La huella indeleble

I N A U G U R A C I Ó N

Miércoles 27 de septiembre, 19 h.

Entrada libre.

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, a través del Museo Nacional de Arte, comparten esta muestra como panorama general del trabajo continuo y reflexivo de un artista alejado de los grandes escenarios, pero relevante para el conocimiento de las distintas perspectivas y propuestas que integraron el escenario cultural mexicano.

Santos Balmori fue un artista multifacético y apartado, por cuenta propia, de las corrientes plásticas que permearon el quehacer artístico mexicano de su tiempo. Es cierto que su trabajo como ilustrador y cartelista se alinea a las temáticas revolucionarias y combativas, no obstante, su obra de caballete se separa de los cánones de la Escuela Mexicana de Pintura y manifiesta un lenguaje pictórico mucho más cercano a las corrientes figurativas europeas; con claras referencias al Cubismo analítico, el Realismo español, el Expresionismo alemán y, en menor medida, a la pintura metafísica italiana.

Exposición temporal

Héctor García. Miradas sobre un monumento.

Inauguración:

24 de agosto, 19 h.

Entrada libre.

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, a través del Museo Nacional de Arte, presentan la exposición temporal

Rodrigo Pimentel (1945-2022). Transmutaciones

La muestra presentará un recorrido por la trayectoria del artista plástico michoacano.

I N A U G U R A C I Ó N

Jueves 29 de junio
19 h.
#EntradaLibre. No es necesario realizar registro previo.

M U N A L
Tacuba 8, Centro Histórico de la CDMX.

Rodrigo Pimentel (1945-2022). Transmutaciones, es una selección del trabajo de las últimas cuatro décadas en la trayectoria plástica del artista michoacano. Se propone un recorrido a través de los cinco temas que más atraparon sus reflexiones, así se conformaron los núcleos que integran esta muestra: Orígenes; Autorretratos; La máscara, carnaval nacional; Alegorías; Bestiario y Paisaje, con 100 piezas entre óleos, gouaches y dibujos.

En sus obras, el color es uno de los protagonistas, inundando cada espacio del lienzo. Los cuerpos de hombres, dioses y animales son los otros elementos principales que completan su visión, ocupando cada posible rincón de la tela y con su enérgica pincelada construye, a partir de lo anterior, un mundo que cautiva la vista del observador, siendo claros los significados presentados en cada cuadro. En su trabajo, además, persisten la dualidad, la violencia y la calma, el dimorfismo del ser oculto bajo máscaras, escenarios donde dioses, hombres, nahuales, bestias y seres mitológicos habitan en recónditos mundos prehispánicos, culturas a las que les fue sustancial lo dual, todo ello es lo que Pimentel captó y plasmó.

Siempre cercano a su tierra natal, Zináparo, Michoacán fue una de sus más claras influencias, el color y el misterio del que se percató al escuchar los cuentos tradicionales de su tierra dieron forma y significado a los habitantes de sus cuadros. Sus viajes y profundo interés por los artistas y movimientos de su época, como Rufino Tamayo, Alfonso Michel, Pedro Coronel o Andy Warhol, le brindaron la vía para tener una visión muy particular y crítica sobre lo nacional, desmenuzado y reconstruido bajo sus propios términos, mundo al que nos hemos adentrado en esta sentida exposición. 

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, a través del Museo Nacional de Arte, perteneciente a la Red de Museos INBAL, presentan la exposición temporal

Monet. Luces del Impresionismo

La muestra presentará tres obras referenciales de Claude Monet, dos de ellas nunca antes vistas en México, en diálogo con importantes piezas de la #ColecciónMUNAL.

La muestra estará disponible en horario regular del museo desde el 27 de abril hasta el 27 de agosto de 2023 en el segundo piso del Munal.

Inauguración:
Miércoles 26 de abril de 2023, 19 h.
#EntradaLibre 
No es necesario reservar.

 M u s e o   N a c i o n a l   d e   A r t e

Tacuba 8, Centro Histórico de la CDMX.
Martes a domingo
10 a 18 h. (Último acceso 17:30 h.)
Entrada general: 85 pesos. Domingos entrada libre.
Entrada libre para estudiantes, docentes, adultos mayores, menores de 13 años y personas con discapacidad.
Si nos visitas con bolsos o mochilas pequeñas, recuerda siempre cargarla hacia enfrente.
No está permitido el acceso a sala con botellas, bolsos grandes ni objetos punzocortantes.

V i s i t a s   g u i a d a s

Visitas en horario especial:
nayelli.rodriguez@munal.inba.gob.mx
Tel: 55 8647 5430, ext. 5057

Visitas corporativas:
yunuen.morales@patronatomunal.org
Tel: 55 8647 5444

* N O T A

El Museo Nacional de Arte no autoriza visitas guiadas externas a la institución.

Debido a la alta afluencia de personas, no hay visitas guiadas dentro de la sala Monet. Luces del Impresionismo.

En caso de requerir una visita en horario especial, tendrá que ser agendada previamente al correo: nayelli.rodriguez@munal.inba.gob.mx

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, a través del Museo Nacional de Arte, presentan María Sada. Biofilia. Arte y Naturaleza como una invitación a pensar y repensarnos, a partir del entorno, en aquello que señalaba el escritor y crítico francés Émile Zola: El arte es la naturaleza vista a través de un temperamento.

A partir de los postulados del biólogo Edward O. Wilson, el concepto de Biofilia debe entenderse como el amor por la naturaleza, el mismo que lleva a la artista regiomontana María Sada a sendas reflexiones en torno a la relación innata de la especie humana con el resto del mundo vivo. María Sada lleva al espectador a universos donde árboles, bosques, selvas, plantas, flores, mares y animales inciden en la verdadera estatura del ser vivo.

Exposición temporal

Abrigos. Crisol de Culturas.

 
Obras de Irma Sofía Poeter.

 
 
La Secretaría de Cultura del Gobierno de México y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL), a través del Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), que pertenece a la Red de Museos INBAL, en colaboración con la Secreatría de Cultura de Baja California, presentan la exposición Abrigos. Crisol de culturas.

  
A través de la visión y el trabajo de la artista mexicano-americana, Irma Sofía Poeter, la exposición presenta una colección de ocho piezas de diversas comunidades y culturas elaboradas con la técnica de ensamblede telas, algunas en telar de cintura con tintes naturales y otras de manera industrial.

Hasta el 25 de octubre de 2023

Exposición temporal

Bajo la misma falda
Carmen Boullosa / Magali Lara.
Colaboraciones

Inauguración

16 de noviembre, 19 h.

Entrada libre

Munal x Thyssen

La ruta infinita

Del 28 de septiembre al 04 de diciembre.

Martes a domingo, 10 a 18 h.

 
Museo Nacional de Arte

Tacuba 8, Centro Histórico de la CDMX.

Exposición presentada en el marco de FOTOSEPTIEMBRE.Festival Internacional de Fotografía de México 2022.

El Museo Nacional de Arte dedica una reflexión curatorial al trabajo del fotógrafo neoleonés Armando Salas Portugal. La obra que resguarda el MUNAL de Salas Portugal, pertenece a la colección Carlos Pellicer que fue donada en el año 2022 para su conservación y exhibición. En ese tenor, el museo se congratula de poner ante el público, piezas de uno de los fotógrafos más destacados de México en el siglo XX.

Biblioteca del Museo Nacional de Arte.
Segundo piso.

Del 7 de septiembre de 2022 al 26 de marzo de 2023.

Martes a domingo, 10 a 18 h.

Tacuba 8, Centro Histórico de la CDMX.

Exposición temporal

Germán Cueto. Una visión vanguardista

I N A U G U R A C I Ó N

Miercoles 24 de agosto, 19 h.

#EntradaLibre

La Secretaría de Cultura del Gobierno de México y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL), a través del Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), que pertenece a la Red de Museos INBAL, presentan la exposición 
Carlos Pellicer. Amistad y memoria.
 

En el marco por el 40 aniversario de este recinto, esta muestra que exhibe una parte sustancial de la colección, además de poner en valor su generosa donación por parte de Carlos Pellicer López, heredero y sobrino del artista tabasqueño.

El título de la muestra alude a la historia y conformación del acervo, el cual se nutrió principalmente de obsequios personales, fruto del acercamiento y las relaciones de amistad que el poeta mantuvo con figuras prominentes de la vida artística y cultural del siglo XX.

Bajo la curaduría del propio Pellicer López y de la investigadora, María Estela Duarte, acompañados por un nutrido grupo de investigadores, la muestra presenta una distinguida selección de obras divididas en siete núcleos temáticos.

La palabra es de plata, el silencio de oro

Exposición temporal que reúne importantes piezas de Darío Escobar en diálogo abierto con la colección virreinal del Museo Nacional de Arte, que invitan al espectador a una reflexión en pie de igualdad con los guiños, texturas, rebuscamientos y simbología del barroco novohispano.

Visítala en el segundo piso del Munal 

Inauguración

8 de junio de 2022

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, a través del Museo Nacional Arte, presentan la exposición temporal

Festín de sabores. Banquete mexicano.

Esta muestra, representa un recorrido por uno de los temas de mayor recurrencia en el arte: la comida. A través de las obras presentadas en las salas de exposición temporal, se reafirma la riqueza de la compleja y variada gastronomía mexicana, considerada dentro de las cinco más prestigiosas del mundo, y la puesta en valor de su representación artística a través de los siglos.

Hasta el 16 de abril de 2023.

Muestra temporal de gabinete

La diosa de la casa de Rembrandt

A partir del 24 de febrero hasta el 30 de septiembre de 2022.

Martes a domingo, 10 a 18 h.
El acceso a la muestra está incluido en el boleto de entrada general.

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, a través del Museo Nacional de Arte, que pertenece a la Red de Museos, presentan la exposición La diosa de la casa de Rembrandt, en el marco conmemorativo por el 40 aniversario del recinto.

Conformada por obras de Rembrandt van Rijn, el gran maestro holandés del barroco, la pieza estelar de la muestra es el retrato de Palas Atenea, óleo procedente de una colección particular europea, que por primera vez se exhibirá en México en la sala Jorge Alberto Manrique del MUNAL.

En esta obra, Rembrandt utilizó como modelo a Hendrickje Sttofels, compañera sentimental, madre de su hija Cornelia, así como musa de sus retratos. Pintada para el connotado Festival del Gremio de pintores de San Lucas de Ámsterdam hacia 1654 –y cercana en iconografía al cuadro de Alejandro de Macedonia que conserva el Museo Calouste Gulbenkian de Lisboa– se trata de una espléndida pieza en la que Hendrickje aparece de tres cuartos con yelmo, armadura y escudo de exquisitas tonalidades metálicas. La capa de vivo rojo, muy probablemente pigmentada con la grana americana, contrasta con el fondo en penumbra. Una luz cenital proveniente del extremo superior derecho del cuadro imprime expresión y solemnidad a la diosa griega, acaso como una metáfora de la fortaleza de la modelo para vivir fuera del matrimonio con un artista y así encargarse de la administración familiar y venta de sus pinturas. La perla que pende de la oreja es un guiño, inteligente y sutil, con el que Rembrandt defendió de las críticas sociales a quien fuera la última gran mujer de su vida.

Nos honramos en presentar para el público mexicano esta emblemática obra, anteriormente exhibida en la Galería de la Asociación de Arte de Aalen, así como en el Schaezlerpalais de Augsburgo, Alemania.

Catálogo digital: https://bit.ly/RembrandtMunal

Exposición temporal

Héctor Xavier. Señales de vida

A partir del 7 de diciembre de 2021.

Segundo piso del Museo Nacional de Arte.

A P E R T U R A

Viernes 12 de noviembre de 2021

En 2021 se cumplieron 500 años de la Caída de México-Tenochtitlan. El 13 de agosto de 1521, tras cruentos combates y un largo sitio, la ciudad que hasta entonces había sido asiento de la civilización mexica quedó sometida al dominio del imperio de España. Este suceso dio pie a la instauración de un orden colonial, vigente por los siguientes tres siglos, que en las comunidades nativas se vivió como destrucción, expoliación y sojuzgamiento, pero también dio lugar a innumerables intercambios, mixturas y expresiones de resistencia. Las tradiciones culturales de Europa, África y Oriente entraron en contacto con el complejo civilizatorio de Mesoamérica. Con motivo de esa efeméride, el Museo Nacional de Arte presenta la muestra Constelaciones de la memoria. Relatos y contrarrelatos de la Conquista, que invita reflexionar sobre las modalidades de reconstrucción histórica y reinterpretación artística de esa etapa, a la vez traumática y fundacional.

Obras y documentos de diversos géneros, técnicas y periodos, se conjuntan en el montaje de Constelaciones de la memoria con el fin de que el espectador tenga a la vista ejemplos de las distintas narrativas, contradictorias o complementarias, canónicas o alternativas, basadas en testimonios fehacientes o libradas al influjo de las leyendas, de que se ha nutrido nuestra comprensión transgeneracional del periodo de la Conquista.

Nuestra memoria histórica alberga relatos y figuraciones de la Conquista que fueron realizados desde distintas perspectivas y en función de diversos intereses. En un tratamiento que busca reconocer el valor documental de las obras artísticas y la potencialidad imaginativa de los documentos, Constelaciones de la memoria pone su punto de atención no tanto en la confirmación o desmentido de la veracidad de los relatos históricos sino en la constatación de cómo éstos han sido materia de continuas reinterpretaciones por cuenta de creadores de todas las disciplinas.

Los recuerdos, evocaciones y reconstrucciones de la Conquista se articulan en constelaciones que están en permanente movimiento. En esos dinámicos arreglos inciden lo mismo la doxa cívica y educativa, el ánimo mitológico de la cultura popular y la fabulación mediática, que las aportaciones de los estudiosos y creadores inconformes con la reiteración de lo consabido. En ese sentido, Constelaciones de la memoria se hace eco de las investigaciones que en recientes décadas han cuestionado las versiones simplificadoras de la Conquista. Aquello que suele describirse como hazaña épica de un grupo de aventureros españoles en quienes encarnaba la superioridad tecnológica y cultural del Occidente cristiano y capitalista, debe entenderse como parte de procesos y contextos en los que influyeron múltiples factores. Episodios tan relevantes como la Caída de México-Tenochtitlan son dignos de conmemoración, pero igualmente del enriquecimiento, actualización y crítica de los conocimientos que tenemos sobre ellos.

Exposición abierta al público a partir del viernes 24 de septiembre de 2021.

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, a través del Museo Nacional de Arte, presentan la exposición Esto no me pertenece –un diálogo sincrónico entre las grandes efemérides 1521-1821-2021 y la obra del artista británico Dexter Dalwood, célebre por su tradición de pintar historias–, mediante la revisión de obras señeras del museo frente a una mirada que resignifica los procesos históricos de nuestro país.

Artistas emblemáticos como Petronilo Monroy, José María Velasco, Francisco Goitia, Diego Rivera y José Clemente Orozco hacen de esta muestra una invitación a repensar nuestra historia, para mirar –desde otra perspectiva– aquelloque desde la tradición oficial nos ha sido contado. Las siluetas en carboncillo trazadas directamente por el artista en las salas Coppedè del recinto, hecho sin precedente en el MUNAL, dan cuenta de una reflexión contemporánea sobre las efemérides de la Conquista de México y la caída de México-Tenochtitlan que tuvieron lugar hace 500 años.

Segundo piso del Museo Naciona de Arte.
Tacuba 8, Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México.
Martes a domingo, 11 a 17 h.

#EstoNoMePertenece

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, a través del Museo Nacional de Arte, presentan la exposición temporal

Símbolo y reino. Tres grandes colecciones novohispanas

proyecto conjunto entre dos museos públicos y un museo privado de la Ciudad de México: el Museo Nacional de Arte; Museo Nacional de Historia, Castillo de Chapultepec; y el Museo Soumaya de la Fundación Carlos Slim.

Apertura al público:

21 de julio de 2021

Forma expresiva que introduce en las artes figuraciones representativas de valores y conceptos, así es como la Real Academia de la Lengua Española define la palabra «símbolo». Es precisamente esta cualidad la que se destaca en las sesenta obras novohispanas reunidas en una exposición que suma la curaduría, coordinación y gestiones de tres emblemáticos museos –uno privado y dos públicos– de la Ciudad de México: el Museo Soumaya de la Fundación Carlos Slim; el Museo Nacional de Historia, Castillo de Chapultepec, INAH; y el Museo Nacional de Arte, INBAL.

El mundo virreinal, heredero de la fusión de múltiples cosmovisiones, se expresó mediante un rico lenguaje simbólico que en todo momento echó mano de la plástica y las letras. Arquitectura, pintura, escultura y artes decorativas se revistieron, tanto en la tradición civil como en la religiosa, de nutridas narraciones, descripciones y alegorías. Bajo las líneas didácticas y evangélicas del Barroco –que más que un estilo artístico fue una forma de vida–, los símbolos definieron el universo cotidiano de los siglos virreinales.

Las colecciones de tres museos se unen para exponer algunos de los elementos simbólicos que articularon el pensamiento y la devoción en Nueva España. Con el Museo Nacional de Arte en la Ciudad de México como primera sede, esta muestra ha sido diseñada para llegar a otros públicos a lo largo de la República Mexicana. Grandes pinceles de la talla de Andrés de Concha, Baltasar de Echave Orio, Luis Juárez, Antonio Rodríguez, Juan Rodríguez Juárez, Diego de Borgraf, Cristóbal de Villalpando, José de Ibarra y Miguel Cabrera, entre muchos otros, orquestan las voces y sensibilidades que acudieron al símbolo como expresión y categoría estética.

Un arte es tanto más verdadero cuanto más habla de lo Real. En él, utilidad y belleza, idoneidad y significación se juntan, pues el artista produce algo útil, algo para ser usado, un medio para una finalidad, apunta el filósofo Francisco Martínez Albarracín. Es en este binomio, función y belleza, donde artistas, motivos y temas novohispanos encontraron profundos significados que, al leerlos detenidamente, acaso sigan formando parte de nuestro imaginario colectivo.

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL), a través del Museo Nacional de Arte (Munal), perteneciente a la Red de Museos del INBAL, presentan la muestra titulada El eterno retorno. La Muerte en las colecciones del Museo Nacional de Arte, que exhibe 350 años de evocaciones mortuorias a través de pintura, escultura, grabado y arte popular.

Artistas como Cristóbal de Villalpando, Juan Correa, José de Páez, José del Castillo, José Guadalupe Posada, Roberto Montenegro y David Alfaro Siqueiros están presentes con obras relativas al binomio vida-muerte.

Visita esta exposición de gabinete en la sala Silvio Contri en la planta baja del museo.

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (inbal), a través del Museo Nacional de Arte (munal), presentan la muestra titulada Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam. Una mirada barroca sobre la Compañía de Jesús, que destaca los grandes aciertos plásticos del Barroco y el tránsito al Neoclasicismo en torno a la tradición de los jesuitas.

En torno al tema de la Compañía de Jesús —fundada por san Ignacio de Loyola en 1534 y ratificada mediante bula papal de Paulo iii en 1540—, las obras dan cuenta de los aciertos de la Contrarreforma católica y su amplio efecto en la Propaganda Fide en el Nuevo Mundo.

Visítala en la Sala Jorge Alberto Manrique, en la planta baja del museo.

La Secretaría de Cultura y el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, a través del Museo Nacional de Arte, presentan la exposición temporal Vístome palabras entretejidas.

La muestra, inserta en la conmemoración del Día Internacional de la Mujer, genera un diálogo interdisciplinario entre la poesía, la escultura textil de Miriam Medrez y las obras manieristas y barrocas del museo. Presenta trece vestidos elaborados por Medrez a partir de la invitación que la artista hizo a escritoras mexicanas, para abordar la forma en que consideran el acto de vestir y de los textos que resultaron de dichas reflexiones.

Vístome palabras entretejidas será expuesta en las recientemente renovadas salas virreinales del museo hasta el diciembre de 2021.

I N A U G U R A C I Ó N

Sábado 14 de marzo

12:30 h.

Entrada libre.

La exposición Originalmentefalso de Gabriel de la Mora es un audaz ejercicio de diálogo entre la serie homónima del artista y el acervo del Museo Nacional de Arte.

El propósito de esta exposición es abordar y problematizar varias de las categorías que forman parte de los círculos institucionales, intelectuales y comerciales alrededor del arte. Nociones como originalidad, autoría, creatividad o iconicidad, quedan trastocados por la obra de De la Mora, quien interviene obras falsas de numerosos artistas mexicanos, las cuales ha colectado arduamente para transformarlas mediante procesos físicos y químicos que, además de alterar la configuración del objeto inicialmente falso, trastocan sus discursos de enunciación, dando como resultado un objeto nuevo, en donde la obra inicial es completamente irreconocible.

Al establecer un diálogo con la colección del Museo Nacional de Arte, esta exposición buscará abrir en el espectador preguntas en torno a la práctica artística, tanto de los maestros consagrados de la plástica nacional, como en la propuesta conceptual de Gabriel de la Mora. La colección del Museo Nacional de Arte, en este sugerente diálogo entre los conceptos de «original y falso», será asimismo apreciada como semillero de reflexión para las estéticas y poéticas contemporáneas.

I N A U G U R A C I Ó N

Martes 04 de febrero
19:30 h.
Entrada libre

I N A U G U R A C I Ó N

Miércoles 23 de octubre, 19:30 h.

Conversatorio

Miércoles 23 de octubre, 12:30 h.

Anita Brenner. Luz de la modernidad

El Museo Nacional de Arte, en colaboración con Arte y Cultura Grupo Salinas, presentan la exposición: Anita Brenner. Luz de la Modernidad, que inaugura en el marco de la 3ª edición del Festival Internacional de Fotografía, FotoMéxico.

Las piezas que conforman la exposición Anita Brenner. Luz de la Modernidad provienen en su mayoría del Acervo Anita Brenner que resguarda Arte & Cultura Grupo Salinas, perteneciente a la Colección Ricardo B. Salinas Pliego, que dialogarán con obras maestras del acervo constitutivo del Museo Nacional de Arte para guiar al público por una reflexión sobre la trascendencia de Anita Brenner en el arte y cultura mexicanos.

 I N A U G U R A C I Ó N

Miércoles 30 de octubre

19:30 h.

Entrada libre.

#BrennerEnElMUNAL

La pieza maestra El maritirio de San Andrés, pintada en 1639 por el máximo exponente del barroco flamenco, Peter Paul Rubens, llega por primera vez a la Ciudad de México.

Se trata de una pieza magistral de gran formato, pues mide más de tres metros de altura, realizada un año antes del deceso de Rubens, la cual narra los momentos previos a la muerte del apóstol San Andrés, crucificado por su negativa de adorar a los ídolos paganos en la ciudad de Patras, Grecia. El dramatismo de la escena se centra en el gesto de súplica de Maximilia, mujer de san Andrés, ante el cónsul Aegeus, representado magistralmente sobre su caballo. La dinámica figura de Andrés, crucificado en la cruz decussata o en forma de aspa, domina la composición. La amplia gestualidad de los personajes es uno de los elementos clave de la narrativa: los brazos abiertos de Maximilia, símbolo de intercesión de piedad; la tardía decisión de misericordia de Aegeus, expresada en su rostro y en su mano abierta y, especialmente, la decisión heroica y la expresión de dolor del santo, para la cual Rubens se inspiró en la escultura clásica Laocoonte y sus hijos, considerada en el Barroco como la máxima representación del dolor humano, como refiere Fernando Checa, ex director del Museo del Prado y profesor emérito de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Este lienzo fue encomendado por el mercader flamenco Jan van Vucht al pintor y, luego de su muerte, donado al Hospital de San Andrés de los Flamencos en Madrid, actual sede de la Fundación Carlos de Amberes. Durante un tiempo se exhibió en el Monasterio de El Escorial y formó parte de las colecciones del Museo del Prado, pero desde 1989 pertenece de nuevo a la fundación madrileña.

A partir de esta obra, los visitantes podrán conocer las influencias que la pintura flamenca barroca tuvo sobre grandes maestros virreinales como José Juárez, Cristóbal de Villalpando y Baltasar de Echave y Rioja.

El público podrá contemplar esta magna obra del 5 de septiembre al 8 de diciembre de 2019 gracias al préstamo de la Fundación Carlos de Amberes.

La exposición Siglo XX en el XXI, Colección del Museo Nacional de Arte, es la primera muestra permanente de la reciente administración y tiene como propósito reinstalar en salas la colección de arte de siglo XX del Museo Nacional de Arte, MUNAL.

El guión curatorial es resultado de una exhaustiva revisión del acervo propio del museo y rinde homenaje a las donaciones hechas por artistas, familiares de artistas, coleccionistas y galeristas que han nutrido el patrimonio artístico del pueblo de México que custodia el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Litertura, INBAL.

La exposición se conforma de cinco núcleos, siguiendo orden cronológico y temático.

I. Despertar de la modernidad

II. Arte y revolución

III. Vanguardia y reconstrucción nacional

IV. Reinvención de dos géneros: retrato y naturaleza muerta

V. Hitos de la Escuela Mexicana de Pintura

Grandes obras de artistas consagrados volverán a tomar un lugar en las salas renovadas del Museo Nacional de Arte.

El público tendrá la oportunidad de reencontrarse con obras de Saturnino Herrán, Germán Gedovuis, Félix Parra, Ignacio Rosas, Dr. Atl, Francisco Goitia, José Guadalupe Posada, Leopoldo Méndez, Rosario Cabrera, Lola Cueto, Adolfo Best Maugard, Manuel Maples Arce, Tina Modotti, Abraham Ángel, María Izquierdo, Rufino Tamayo, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera y David Alfaro Siqueiros, entre otros.

En el marco del Año Internacional de las Lenguas Indígenas, nombrado así por la UNESCO, nos complacemos en invitarlos a nuestra más reciente exposición temporal

Voces de la tierra. Lenguas indígenas

México es uno de los países con mayor diversidad lingüística, no obstante, muchas de estas lenguas están en peligro de desaparecer.

La presente exposición se conforma de obras pictóricas, escultóricas, impresas, fotográficas, textiles y dibujísticas que muestran la riqueza lingüística existente en el territorio mexicano.

I N A U G U R A C I Ó N

Jueves 8 de agosto

19 : 30 h

Entrada libre

12 de abril al 29 de septiembre de 2019

Exposición compuesta por 130 piezas, curada por Víctor Rodríguez Rangel.

Primer exposición dedicada a Gerardo Murillo, mejor conocido como Dr. Atl, en el Museo Nacional de Arte. Destacan las obras que fueron adjudicadas al MUNAL en 2007 procedentes de fondos artísticos y nacionales del INBAL.

El conjunto pictórico del Dr. Atl dialoga con artistas como Eugenio Landesio, José María Velasco, Cleofas Almanza, Carlos Rivera, Joaquín Clausell, Francisco Goitia, Luis Nishizawa, Pedro Flores, Mario Almela y Jorge Obregón.

El visitante encontrará desde la violencia volcánica hasta la serenidad campestre, pasando por paisajes tan diversos como valles, nevados y bosques retratados hábilmente por este artista quien es considerado patrimonio artístico y padre del muralismo mexicano.

A 100 años de la llegada de Carlos Mérida a México, la muestra 'Carlos Mérida. Retrato escrito (1891-1984)' busca presentar la más completa retrospectiva del trabajo del artista guatemalteco, guiada por su propia voz, extraída de su autobiografía. La propuesta curatorial permitirá al público transitar entre su vida personal, su proceso creativo y las afinidades artísticas que construyó durante su estancia en nuestro país hasta su muerte en 1984.

La exposición observa un carácter de investigación documental basada en el estudio de cuatro archivos que conforman el universo del artista. Una vida multifacética, llena de experiencia, líneas notas, ritmos, color, que van dando las diferentes etapas creativas del pintor guatemalteco.

La Academia de San Carlos. Ilustración e independencia da seguimiento al proyecto de renovación curatorial de los recorridos permanentes del Museo Nacional de Arte. La exposición recorre la influencia de la Ilustración en la producción artística durante los siglos XVIII y XIX, la creación de la Academia de San Carlos y el influjo que tuvo el movimiento independentista en las artes creadas dentro del territorio nacional.

Conformada por más de 80 obras, cuatro de ellas provenientes de colecciones privadas, las piezas expuestas van desde 1760 hasta 1870. La glorificación de la inmaculada (1773) de Francisco Antonio Vallejo; Galileo en la Universidad de Padua demostrando las nuevas teorías astronómicas (1873) de Félix Parra; El ministerio de San José (ca. 1771) de José de Alcíbar; El genio de la pintura (1871) de José Guadalupe Montenegro; La sagrada familia (1857) de Rafael Flores; Cristóbal Colón en la corte de los Reyes Católicos (1850) de Juan Cordero y El cautiverio de los hebreos en Babilonia (1858), de Joaquín Ramírez son algunas de las obras expuestas en las salas 11 a la 18 en el segundo piso del museo.

La propuesta del nuevo recorrido permanente ofrece una relectura interpretativa de la colección del Museo Nacional de Arte que pone énfasis en los valores artísticos de las obras. La colección misma devela ciertos temas por su presencia constante en las obras que la constituyen: ilustración, despotismo, independencia, academia, ingenio, patria, poder e identidad, entre muchos otros. La sobrevivencia de estos objetos artísticos e ideas nos obliga a establecer diálogos que den sentido a su condición temática y temporal. 

La exposición Saturnino Herrán y otros modernistas pone al alcance del público la versátil gama de géneros que orbitaron su obra, hoy patrimonio artístico de México. Herrán, célebre representante del modernismo plástico mexicano, se nutrió de tendencias internacionales para retratar tanto exotismos y simbolismos como figuras de la vida cotidiana y de la gente común, que configuraron en sus pinturas un imaginario del “alma nacional”. Este imaginario se nutrió del trabajo de la generación del 98 española y del modernismo latinoamericano configurando un movimiento cultural orgulloso de sus raíces sincréticas y reivindicador de la hispanidad.

El Ateneo de la Juventud, del cual formó parte Herrán, trabajó también en este sentido, a lo que se sumó además el factor político, la discusión sobre el patrimonio y la soberanía nacionales que tuvo lugar en el carrancismo. El diálogo, entonces, con diversos colegas, maestros e influencias internacionales y locales permite un análisis de la obra del pintor con una visión renovada, para entender un fenómeno plástico cuya simbología forma parte esencial de nuestra identidad.

The exhibition Nahui Olin. La mirada infinita is a clear and accurate study regarding the life and work of the artist María del Carmen Mondragón Valseca (1893-1978), a pioneer woman who, during the first half of the 20th century, experimented with a wide variety of artistic genres such as poetry, literature, performance, music and, particularly, painting. 

The exhibition will unravel the creative brilliance implicit in the work of this unique artist who was relegated from the historiographic studies, for she wasn’t completely understood in all of her dimension, causing the oblivion of her artistic legacy.  

In collaboration with the Musei Capitolini of Rome, Italy, we present one of the few works of Caravaggio that exist in the world: La Buona Ventura (1596), which is a key painting to understanding the early development of the artist and his first approach to the chiaroscuro.

The exhibition shows the legacy of tenebrism proposed and spread by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) in painting from Europe and New Spain, through representative works of our national collections.

At the same time, the Caravaggio Experience will allow the visitor to appreciate the plastic solutions of this painter by stimulating a multi-sensorial immersion in his work.

Caravaggio. A work, a legacy

From February 22 to May 20, 2018

Caravaggio Experience

From February 22 to the first of July, 2018

#CaravaggioMUNAL

After being published in 2007, the book La merienda del señor Verde (Mr. Green’s snack) by Javier Sáez Castán hasn’t stopped fascinating its readers. Among these readers, we can find preschool children in Northern Portugal, Spaniard illustrators, young philosophy students in a Venezuelan secondary or scholars of Mexican language.

Mr. Green extends an unusual invitation to his friends so they visit him in his monochromatic world. From all directions, his guests Mr. Yellow, Mr. Purple, Mr. Blue, Mr. Brown and Mr. Black attend the invitation (we assume they come from their own unicolor worlds, but that’s part of what it’s hidden) to be informed by their host that he has found a mysterious sign. The sign is an invitation to cross a door with no returning point. The gentlemen face the challenge with determination and team spirit. On the other side of the door, they find a multicolor world where the snacks are served. The fictional framework is an invitation to discover a surprising world that, paradoxically, it’s a journey from fiction to a closer reality to the reader. It is a reminder of how extraordinary is our world if we dare to experience.

The illustrations, made in oil on large wooden boards, create a unique universe that is meticulously articulated and is potentially expansive since they have the capability of suggesting what it’s not there. In the images, the unusual mixtures of eccentricity and formality are underscored, along with the bourgeois solemnity and infant spontaneity that are nourished by pictorial surrealism’s sources. At the same time, each illustration has been carefully conceived and many of them are impregnated with cinematographic, literary and artistic fictional references even though, paradoxically, they are pinned to images of that time.

This exhibition was held within the framework of the Festival “FotoMéxico 2017” which took the figure of Alfred Briquet as its main axis, in order to unravel the links between the first generation of photography in Mexico and the Barbizon School in France. His work dialogues with the works of French photographers who played a key role in the development of the birth of Mexican photography and influenced the future of the artistic field. Some of the works that were exhibited here were shown for the first time. Curated by Gregory Leroy, the exhibition featured more than 60 artworks.  

This exhibition showed to the visitor the contributions that Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez made to the development of the 19th-century painting in Mexico, which were achieved thanks to his importance as an element for the stylistic change between Romanticism and Realism. His contributions were important because he participated in the creation of an academic painting school in Colombia. This life experience also helped the artist to complete the piece that could be his biggest contribution: the creation of the first female nude in Colombia and México. 

The importance of said representation does not only lie on the premise of the academic paint’s renovation towards Realism, but also on the translation to painting of the metaphoric literary language of the female body as the area that embodies the symbolic representation of the Andean geography. Throughout the exhibition, the visitors were able to recognize the different aesthetic sides of the artist and his incursion in various pictorial genres. Visitors also appreciated the journeys he made to different European regions and how these contributed to the development of his own artistic language. 

This exhibition was a dialogue between the artworks of the well-known contemporary artist Bosco Sodi and the artworks that embody the permanent collection of the Museo Nacional de Arte, from the colonial times and the 20th century. From these confrontations, the formal qualities of the different plastic representations were highlighted. This way it promoted a more intuitive and immediate experience. Sodi’s work stands out for being a seductive exploration of matter, which is evident in elements that involve thoughts about change, accidents, and imperfections. 

This exhibition proposed a review of the different ways in which melancholy was represented in the arts, mainly in the plastic produced in Mexico between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 21st century. This exhibition allowed the reflection on the way in which affection and human passions have been symbolized in the viceregal, modern and current art.

Divided into four sections, this exhibition provided different theoretical perspectives that allowed the appreciation of the works of various artistic periods. It also assessed the emotional charge that suggests both the themes represented in them, as well as the plastic resources with which they were captured. Thus, we presented 130 artworks that reconstructed the distinct ways in which melancholy, as a classic motif in the history of art, was represented in Mexican art and, at the same time, enabled emotional approaches to discomfort and melancholy wit. 

The Museo Nacional de Arte presented, for the first time in Mexico City, an exhibition of the essential creation periods of Otto Dix (1891-1969), an artist who captured the historical reality of a conflictive period in Germany in which the vast thematic and expressive development of a character that was active for more than 60 years is visible. Thanks to the curatorial work of Ulrike Lorenz, a specialist on Otto Dix and current director of the German museum Kunsthalle Mannheim, the exhibition showed more than 160 works in 7 thematic sections that explored the most representative events about war, violence, and passion. Thus, the precepts that formulated the artistic impulse of Dix in his search of the representation of immediate and coarse reality, resulting from the wild nature of the human being, were analyzed.

The Glyptotheque of the Museo Nacional de Arte is a space created as part of the renovation of its permanent exhibitions. This space includes sculptures of artists like Manuel Tolsá, José María Labastida, Manuel Vilar, Gabriel Guerra, Jesús Contreras, Oliverio Martínez, Rómulo Rozo, Francisco Arturo Marín, Mardonio Magaña, among others.

We include more than 70 sculptures made of plaster, bronze, terracotta, clay, stone, and wood; as well as a series of works on paper related to sculpture. For example, drawings, lithographs, and engravings. The sculptural production is an important field in our country’s history of art and it deserves a space for exhibition, interpretation and its own study.

In an etymological sense, the term glyptotheque is a combination of the Greek words “glyptós” (engraved and sculpted stones) and “theque” (place). Together they refer to a space in which the qualities of sculptures and the stylistic links between them can be admired.

The Glyptotheque is located in room 22, in the first floor of the museum

This exhibition offered an overview of the different modern movements linked to the cultural construction of Brazil till the beginning of contemporary art. This exhibition was constituted by more than 150 artworks of the Hecilda and Sérgio Fadel Collection, which is one of the most important and complete of the Brazilian art.

With paintings, sculptures, facilities, graphic works and drawings, the exhibition was arranged in a chronological way in three modules, subdivided, at the same time, thematically. The review covers the first modernism in Brazil and the relationship between the indigenous origins and the international modernization, as well as the rupture with modern art, including experiences toward the contemporary art.

Victoria Giraudo is in charge of the curatorial work, which includes pieces of artists like Belmiro de Almeida, Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral, Vicente do Rego Monteiro, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, Cícero Dias, Candido Portinari, Lasar Segall, Maria Martins, Waldemar Cordeiro, Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, among others.

The Museo Nacional de Arte and the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) joined together to exhibit, for the first time in Mexico, this representative selection of works of the Brazilian artistic endeavor of the 20th century.

The National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), through the Museo Nacional de Arte, honors the family Maples Arce Vermeersch who donated important pieces in 1985, 1992 and 2015. Among these pieces, there are oils, watercolors, drawings, gouaches, plates, impressions, photographs, and furniture.

With an integral vision and meeting the requirements of its historic program of donations, the Museo Nacional de Arte offered to the general public, and for the knowledge of specialists, a selection of artworks. The latter allowed us to delve into the personality of Manuel Maples Arce who was a poet, literate and collector born in Papantla, Veracruz on May 1st, 1900 and died in Mexico City, 1981.

Manuel Maples Arce was head and leader of the Stridentism movement (1921-1927), a group that proposed an aesthetic transformation in daily life matters by creating literates, poets and artists like Germán List Arzubide (1898-1998), Salvador Gallardo (1893-1981), Arqueles Vela (1899-1977), Miguel Aguillón Guzmán (1898-1995), Ramón Alva de la Canal (1892-1985), Fermín Revueltas (1901-1935) and Germán Cueto (1893-1975). The members of the Stridentist movement achieved one of the most relevant moments to the vanguards of the first half of the 20th century, in the national and international context.

The museum is especially grateful to Mireya Maples Vermeersch for having continued with the vocation and aims of her parents by sharing the artworks with the Mexican people. She has also worked as an integral part of the curatorial team, especially regarding the mentoring of said project.

The Museo Nacional de Arte received 12 artworks donated by the Fundación Zúñiga Laborde A.C. Among the distinguished active Mexican artists of the 20th century and, at the same time, authors of these artworks, we can find Francisco Zúñiga, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Ramón Alva de la Canal, Francisco Gutiérrez, Emilio Amero, Roberto Montenegro, among others. Before incorporating these artworks to the permanent exhibition of the museum, the works were exhibited in the Monothematic room located on the second floor. The exhibition was curated by Ariadna Patiño Guadarrama.

The Museo Nacional de Arte publicly recognizes to the Fundación Zúniga Laborde A.C their sensitivity for preserving and donating this property to the Mexican heritage.

This exhibition offered to the public a general overview of modern art’s development during the 20th century thanks to a selection of more than 140 artworks deriving from the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France and from the Museo Nacional de Arte; as well as the participation of other important collections.

By dividing the exhibition thematically, the aesthetic contributions impelled by avant-garde artistic movements were highlighted, which simultaneously and in different latitudes, coincided in the same concerns about the rejection of the figurative tradition of naturalistic representation and the exaltation of matter as an essential condition of a new pictorial language.

Some of the works of painting great masters of this period engaged in a dialogue derived from the confrontation of the collective and individual doubts, allowing the reunion of artists like Pierre Bonnard, Albert Gleizes, George Braque, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Fernand Lèger, Pierre Soulages, Francis Bacon, junto a Saturnino Herrán, Ángel Zárraga, Gerardo Murillo, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Germán Cueto, Remedios Varo, Roberto Montenegro, among others.

The Museo Nacional de Arte is grateful and recognizes the generous contribution of the French embassy in Mexico in order to make this exhibition possible.

The Museo Nacional de Arte presented, Yo, el Rey. La monarquía hispánica en el arte (I, the King. Spanish monarchy in the art), an exhibition that addressed the configuration and the ways in which the king of Spain was represented in the arts. This was possible thanks to a selection of approximately 200 artworks, objects, and documents.

The exhibition gathered great masters of New Spain and important Spanish painters, among which José Juárez, Cristóbal de Villalpando, Miguel Cabrera, Santiago Rebull, Pantoja de la Cruz, Francisco de Zurbarán, Jean Ranc, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco de Goya stand out.

It also incorporates works from international collections, such as Royal Collections of the National Heritage of Spain, the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, the Museo de América, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Hispanic Society; as well as, national collections from the Museo Nacional de Arte, the Museo Nacional de San Carlos, the Museo Nacional de Historia, the Museo Nacional del Virreinato, the Museo Franz Mayer and the invaluable participation of private collections.

The Museo Nacional de Arte is grateful and recognizes the generous contribution that Arte Mexicano: Promoción y Excelencia AC, Iberdrola, British Airways-Iberia, Hoteles NH, the Patronato del Museo Nacional de Arte AC, and Amigos MUNAL made to this exhibition.

This exhibition sought to trace the development of the greatest contribution of Great Britain to European art. From Gainsborough and Stubbs to J.M.W Turner and Constable, from Whistler and Nicholson to David Hockney, British art has been defined by the work of landscapers. The exhibition, composed by 111 pieces, began with the greatest topographic painters of the 18th century and go from Romanticism, Pre-Raphaelism, Impressionism, passing through Vanguards and the Modernism of the last century, showing the vitality of the landscape genre in the 21st century.

The exhibition allowed establishing a linkage between traditional art and the contemporaneous, making possible the understanding of the processes that conducted to the representation of the landscape until today. This project, of great importance, represented a binational collaboration between Mexico and Great Britain in order to spread a heritage never seen before in our country.

¡Puro mexicano! offered an interpretation based on the exceptional artistic qualities of the artworks produced during three periods that were defined by our national historiography: the New Spain, the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, confronted by pieces of the 21st century. The exhibition tried to provoke an aesthetic experience to the public by letting the artworks themselves show their power of seduction, their narrative capability and their unrestrainable vitality that pours out.

This exhibition was constituted by 40 notable artworks from private collections and 140 significant works of our collections, from which a 50% has been shown very little, at least in the last decade. We aimed to rediscover along with the public their importance and beauty since they will be part of the permanent exhibition.  

Consumption. Prix Pictet is an exhibition that gathers the eleven finalists of the fifth cycle of the prize founded in 2008 by The Pictet Group, a Swiss bank of investments and management of private heritage, established in 1805.

From its creation, Prix Pictet has focused on promoting photography that deals with sustainability matters, especially, those regarding the environment. The water, soil, growth, and power are themes that have an impact on humanity and are a cause of controversy nowadays. In 2014, the prize focused on consumption.

Approximately 70 of the most recognized photographers of the world have been finalists of the Prix Pictet, among those we include 4 winners: Benoît Aquin, Nadav Kander, Mitch Epstein y Luc Delahaye.

275 selectors from 66 countries participated in the evaluation of the works of 700 photographers worldwide. At the beginning of May, Michael Schmidt was named the winner of Consumption by Kofi Annan, honorary president of Prix Pictet, in the Victoria & Albert Museum of London for his monumental series about the food industry: Lebensmittel. 

In keeping with its commitment to study the treasures of its heritage, the Museo Nacional de Arte presents Ideal Territory. José María Velasco: Perspectives on an Era, as part of a curatorial survey of the collections that form its permanent exhibition. The 103 artworks presented, executed by local and foreign artists, span from the 1830s to the 1920s.

This exhibition aims to explore the different modalities and fields that converged in the studied period, and that generated a series of figurative and symbolic strategies that allowed the pictorial reproductions of our vast national territory. The latter derived from diverse conceptual and aesthetic scenery to a highly suggestive and naturalist level.

Beginning with the artistic output of José María Velasco (1840-1912), a leading exponent of the expressivity of modern landscape painting, we have included a group of artists like Eugenio Landesio, Casimiro Castro, and Luis Coto. These artists have a presence in the multiple stylistic and conceptual dimensions that generate a gamut of perspectives regarding our national territory from the painting point of view, drawing, graphic works, and photography.

This is the beginning of the total renovation of the permanent exhibition of the Museo Nacional de Arte. The room that houses this exhibition, since September 2 of 2014, is named José María Velasco in honor of the renowned landscape painter. The location in the museum will allow the visitor to value the importance of his work by being at the heart of the facility. 

Through a variety of drawings, documents, and photographs, this project’s main goal was to support the idea of how the Academy of San Carlos wasn't the only institution that consolidated the power of teaching and the spreading of aesthetical codes regarding drawing. There were other institutions, throughout our national territory, that contributed to the formation of artists. In order to demonstrate this thesis, the seminar of Dr. Aurelio de los Reyes of UNAM’s Institute of Aesthetic Research, along with a team of 15 specialists, performed a comprehensive research in files, institutions, private collections. This was done to count drawing’s basic elements by the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. The curatorial proposal was developed by the seminar of postdoctoral students, under the coordination of Dr. Aurelio de los Reyes. The exhibition was constituted by pieces of private and institutional collections. 

As part of the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of the first Plein Air Painting School, this exhibition offered a review of the artworks belonging to the main students and teachers, involved in its development. This exhibition’s main goal was showing the plastic production carried out by different artists who were part of the generation that emerged from the break up with the Academy of San Carlos. This generation went on strike in 1911, which gave, as a result, the naming of Alfredo Ramos Martínez as director of the Academy in 1913 and the creation of the Plein Air Painting School of Santa Anita. The project emphasizes the development of teaching and the production of painting in plein air derived from the processes of artistic education in crisis, disaggregation, and reintegration. It gave, as a result, the creation of the School of Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving “La Esmeralda” in 1943. The curatorial proposal of this exhibition was developed by the team of the Museo Nacional de Arte. 

This exhibition was developed to generate a dialogue between the collections of the Museo Nacional de Arte and the artworks of the artist, which render account of the links between contemporary art and the collections of the museum. Realismo Aumentado is an exhibition that derives from the meaning that the artist gives to the objects that he has represented and offers us the possibility of observing them with detail through a dialogue that locates them in a different context. The countryside, religion, nature and the beliefs are formed as a code of what possibly means “Mexican” and of that which identifies us as Mexicans by means of the symbols that Hugo Laurencena voluntarily extracted as part of our tradition. 

This exhibition gathered 69 representative artworks of the pictorial production and the drawings of Herrera during his academic education, his stay in Italy and his return to Mexico. The pieces came from the museum “Rubén Herrera” located in the city of Saltillo, Coahuila; from the Pinacoteca del Ateneo Fuente of the Autonomous University of Coahuila and private collections. Among these pieces stood out portraits, still lifes, and sketches of large format. 

In the context of the exhibition Surrealismo. Vasos Comunicantes, the Museo Nacional de Arte, in collaboration with Brigita Anguiano, showed more than 45 artworks of Raúl Anguiano about a little known thematic and that, carried out in 8 years, portrayed his dreams and a parallel reality to his production of political content. 

The exhibition sought to present a critical interpretation of the scope of this artistic tendency in Mexico to indicate that Surrealism could have escaped from Europe and remained alive and renovated in those cities that received the representatives of this movement as exiled artists. 

Series of paintings based on sculptures from the collection of the Museo Nacional de Arte and that were produced in the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. The exhibition sought to create a dialogue deriving from the contrast of plastic languages, two horizons of production and two different materialities. 

The exhibition aimed to show to the Mexican public the formal and thematic features that characterized Flemish painting, as well as highlighting the way in which these models impinged on the development of New Spain’s painting. Thanks to this dialogue established between two fields, the visitors were able to appreciate the distinctive traits of the Flemish School and abound in the itinerancy and consumption of models in different parts of the Hispanic Monarchy, showing the process of conformation of our viceregal art from a bundle of influences. 

For the first time in Mexico, Escher and his contemporaries were exhibited, approximately 75 artworks of a paradigmatic author of the past century and whose works are housed by the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam. In this context, the work of Maurist Cornelis Escher allowed the recognition of imaginary and impossible worlds. 

The Museo Nacional de Arte welcomed an extraordinary exhibition: Picasso suite 156 347 60, three suites of the painter of Málaga. The pieces that form this exhibition correspond to different periods in the life of the artist and belong to the Fundación Bancaja. Through this collection, the Museo Nacional de Arte tried to give it a new meaning by relating these pieces with the ones that form our art collection from the 20th century. Without finding historic relationships or force formal bonds, we tried to show that the contributions that Piccaso made to the global plastic are also present among our national artists. This exhibition was loaned in order to make occasional discoveries regarding coincidences of aspiration that connect us, as spectators, with a wider spectrum of elements that form the artistic process from the west. A process that keeps influencing significantly the way in which we conceive the 20th century as a culmination of many stories. 

The Museo Nacional de Arte, in collaboration with Lila Downs and Almadía, carried out the exhibition Pecados y milagros, Exvotos aiming to create a dialogue between the different forms of ex-voto, showing the artistic value of this expression that was originally devotional. Similarly, the museum underpinned its intention of widening its resources by introducing new ways to enjoy museums. In this case, music took part in the art experience. This was possible thanks to the work with Lila Downs who shared the evaluation and study of Mexican traditions and its artistic expressions. 

Los sueños de una Nación. Memoria, humor y restitución was a project scheduled to be inaugurated a year after the commemoration of the bicentenary of the Mexican independence. Apart from including 200 pieces, mostly from artists with a leading role in Mexico, four contemporary artists carried out actions in symbolic spaces of great importance achieving the expansion of the exhibition outside the museum. 

This unprecedented exhibition reunited the greatest number featherwork mosaics, rebuilding their production context in order to discover the technical exchange between Mesoamerican and Colonial creation with the European creation from 1300 to 1700.

The pieces that form the exhibition come from different national and foreign collections, some of them were exhibited for the first time in our country and outside their original repositories. This exhibition is the result of an interdisciplinary dialogue among history, art’s history, anthropology, and ornithology. 

The exhibition Vanguardia en papel presented one of the less known collections of Mexican art by showing artworks in paper that use techniques such as engravings, drawings, watercolors, among others. The exhibition was composed of 51 pieces of authors like Cueto, Tamayo, Guerrero Galván, O’Higgins, Covarrubias, Orozco, Romero, Toledo, Alice Rahon, Leonora Carrington, David Alfaro Siqueiros. From the second half of the 20th century, the Mexican art had an important turning point. The influence of the European Plastic movements, along with the concern of a group of young authors that were part of the Breakaway Generation, produced one of the most important artworks of the last century. Those artworks belonged to Abstract art and the movements that followed. 

The exhibition México Postal. Mensajes de la Revolución focused on the display of stamps and postcards elaborated during the revolutionary period, showing the images captured in them and their usage. At that moment, the first centenary of the Mexican independence was celebrated and, at the same time, a movement to overthrow Porfirio Diaz’s regime began. As a result, the philately production, by being a tool and object of a federal service such as the postal mail, received the influences of those social moments. When this event, that divided the social and politic history of the country, finished, an ideology of a new order that permeated all areas of institutional areas was created. Thanks to the study of stamps, it was possible to track the necessity of building an identity as a nation and that brought changes in fields like education, ways of production, and social welfare postulated by a government that sought progress and prosperity. In addition, it was possible to identify, inside the philately, the periods in which the revolutionary ideals, framed by the celebrations of past years, were glorified, which turned the stamps into a witness of the time and space in which they were produced, including the artistic dimension that generated them. 

Max Ernst. Una semana de bondad was an exhibition that showed 184 artworks that integrated the third Collage novel of Max Ernst, a German artist who participated in one of the most renowned avant-gardes: Surrealism. In spite of constituting one of Surrealism’s masterpieces, the original collages of Une Semaine de bonté (A Week of Kindness) of Max Ernst, created in 1933, are one of art’s best-kept secrets of the 20th century. In order to elaborate the series of 184 collages (linked to his stay in the Castle of Vigoleno in Italy during the summer), Ernst began mainly with illustrations of different leaflets of the 19th century whose main themes were violence and loving passions. The selected motifs gain, integrated with the collages, a new meaning with which the artist harshly critics the established authority and the conventionalisms of the time. This exhibition followed the structure and the sequence that Max Ernst himself determined for the first edition of Une semaine de bonté (1934) that was published in five books. Each book was identified with a color: Sunday-purple, Monday-green, Tuesday-red, and Wednesday-blue. Due to economic reasons, the last book, yellow, assembled the collages of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  

Imágenes de la Patria (Monterrey) was an exhibition project that presented and analyzed through different historical periods the multiple versions regarding the concepts of homeland, nation, and country. This allowed the visitors to come closer to the various images that have symbolized the Mexican homeland. This exhibition was based on the work of the historian Enrique Florescano. 

El Éxodo mexicano. Los héroes en la mira del arte was an exhibition that gathered exemplary artworks of great Mexican artists outside their fields. This was done thanks to one of the most original historiographical thesis within the past years. For example, the painting of Juan Diego of the Catedral Metropolitana and the one of Benito Juárez of the collection of the Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit of Mexico.

The project explored the possibility that the national heroes could be translated into the figure of a Moses, a guide that leads, by a superior authority, the destiny of its people; it is the result of a thematic approach concerning the most recognized Mexican heroes. The heroes, models of behavior that embodied our values, carried out the ideals of an independent Mexico. The visual representations in which we recognize them, beyond their cultural and ideological significance, also served a series of functional models that highlighted their values.

This exhibition was organized from a group of heroes who shared, in some way, the same identity. Their representations obeyed to the desire of promoting political programs like founding cities, proclaiming laws, eradicating the “evil”, receiving inspiration from heaven, leading the fight, entering triumphant into the city, shaping their image of authority in a portrait, resisting the tyrant or suffering martyrdom and rising as emblems of their ideals.  

Paraíso recobrado. Escenario rural del arte mexicano was an opportunity to offer to the public a selection of artworks that have reflected on the representation of the rural life, the fruits given to us by earth, the allegories of national fertility and the austerity of country people livelihood. This exhibition was divided into different sections: El campo como emblema, Otra mirada al campo, Naturaleza viva, Los frutos de la tierra. Apetito visual, Epígono, Tamayo continuidades.

The objective of the Museo Nacional de Arte was to propose a reflection on the construction of the countryside as an emblem and as an identity symbol. Thanks to the landscapes inherited by José María Velasco, part of our country’s visual narrative had a leading thematic base. Disseminate, celebrate, give transcendence, value what we possess and insist on the motifs of identity were the facts that made that part of the pictorial and sculptural production chose the nationalist path, revaluing the agricultural and craft work as part of a modern artistic sensibility

When the literary and artistic modernism spread throughout Mexico during the firsts decades of the 20th century, Alfonso Reyes joined the magazine Savia Moderna and the Revista Moderna de México, once he arrived at the capital of the country from Nuevo León. It was in those publications that his firsts poems appeared and in the Revista Moderna appeared his essay dedicated to Julio Ruelas (1908). The latter was one of his weekly articles about plastic arts that, even though years later he considered discreet was praised by Justino Fernández in Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo de México. The exhibition Alfonso Reyes y los territorios del arte was prepared to commemorate the 120th anniversary of his birthday and the 50th anniversary of his death, through a project in which art, literature and the cinema were linked under the author’s voice in a detailed literary and aesthetical exercise to open new lines of research and appreciation of plastic arts in the artworks of Alfonso Reyes. 

Roberto Cortázar began from a series of paintings of José Clemente Orozco to prove that art’s raw material can’t either be created nor destroyed; rather it can only be transformed. In the exhibition Los desmembrados según Orozco. Por Roberto Cortázar, he appealed to the tradition, not to reverence it or represent it excessively, but to evidentiate the paradox of creation: nothing is new and, at the same time, everything is about to be discovered.  

The exhibition Diego, Frida y otros revolucionarios was an opportunity to show the processes that took place at the same time of great political and social revolutions. This exhibition began with the influence of the Mexican artist Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez in Colombian territory in the 19th century and it ended with the legacy that Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros left in the Latin-American art. Diego y Frida actively participated in the Mexican revolution and in the change of mentality that was necessary to render a country like Mexico to modernity. Their participation was registered and while they developed a national art, they also generated aesthetical ideas that had an impact on their production and in that of their contemporaries. That way they contributed to creating a favorable environment for the exchange of ideologies and forms. This exhibition allowed our country to show a series of little-known artworks from great artists whose names are widely recognized in the international picture. For example, early works, sketches, easel works and others that show the artistic avant-garde, more than politics, that the artists carried out in personal terms.

Among the Spaniard republicans that lived in exile in Mexico, Miguel Prieto had a very important place. We owe to him the emergence of modern graphic design in Mexico. He was confined in a concentration camp in France and emigrated to Mexico along with his family in 1939. From his works in Spain, it was noticeable the simple and elegant touch that would later characterize him in Mexico, where he polished his artistic personality. The war experience, the exile and the size of his new homeland lead to a significant development in his painting and his consolidation as the most important designer in the middle of the 20th century in the cultural press field in our country. About 50 years from his death, the Museo Nacional de Arte gathered this wonderful exhibition: Miguel Prieto. 1907-1956. La armonía y la furia, la faceta española y mexicana de Miguel Prieto, which revised the different manifestations of his art, painting, scenography, typography, and editorial design.

These artworks reflected on the identity and circumstances of the artist who, on one side evoked his lost homeland and, on the other, he enriched himself from his adoptive country. 

With aim of commemorating the tenth anniversary of the death of the winner of the Nobel Prize of literature, the Museo Nacional de Arte was pleased to present Materia y sentido. El arte mexicano en la mirada de Octavio Paz, an exhibition that sought to bring to the exhibit spaces the approaches, associations, manifestos, analysis, and preferences of Octavio Paz regarding art. The main axis of this exhibition was the texts gathered in the book Los privilegios de la vista (two volumes shown for the first time in 1987), without making aside essential texts like Las peras del olmo (1957), Puertas al campo (1966), and Corriente alterna (1967). Paz wrote, “moved by admiration, curiosity, outrage, complicity, and surprise…”

Materia y sentido sought the realization of the eternal and indissoluble link between the plastic and the literature, a relationship that cast the glance of Octavio Paz in multiple topics. 

La invención de cotidiano. Colección Jumex – Museo Nacional de Arte was an exhibition that gathered, for the first time, the collections of both institutions. With two different ways of collecting and following the line of discourse of the brilliant work of the French philosopher Michel de Certeau, this exhibition proposed a dialogue to meditate on the eternal themes that have integrated the national and international art.

La invención de lo cotidiano was embodied by approximately 150 artworks that include painting, an installation, sculpture, drawing, graphic works, and photography. Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Gregory Crewdson, Rineke Dijkstra, Olafur Eliasson, Gabriel Kuri, Sharon Lockhart, Gabriel Orozco, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José María Velasco were among the presented artists. 

In the field of our mission, aimed to collaborate with museums and institutions related to our vocation, we had in our hands this publication that rendered account of a curatorial work in which pieces from three collections converged: the Museo Nacional de Arte, the Museo Regional de Guanajuato Alhóndiga de Granaditas and the Museo del Pueblo de Guanajuato.

This catalog was the memory of the exhibition that focused on paying homage to the plastic work of an exemplary citizen of Guanajuato of the 19th century: Hermenegildo Bustos. The exhibition was entitled Hermenegildo Bustos. Una comunidad en efigies. The exhibition of 60 pieces on the portrait had a worthy assembly in the historic spaces of the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, as part of the events of the Festival Internacional del Cervantino, in its 2008 edition. 

La muerte. El espejo que no te engaña, an exhibition that the Museo Nacional de Arte housed with special enthusiasm, brought together the cosmovisions that have formed our culture and thought regarding this subject, whose representation by different means is as broad as recurrent. Stories, legends, corridos, and books of different nature were part of the exhibition, which was mainly composed of materials from the collector Mercurio López Casillas.  

La muerte. El espejo que no te engaña proposed a dialogue between these visions that seemed so opposite as complementary, but that was part of our daily life and have in common that inescapable moment that is always present in life, or rather, at the end of it.

Visionary of light and color, Ensor constantly addressed the political, religious, social, economic, and ethnic relations that affected Belgium. A trip that allowed him to get to know and learn about intellectual and literary motifs, which were an extraordinary inspiration for his creations. Between 1886 and 1895, his work developed from realistic scenes in a solemn and gloomy style to fantastic and grotesque forms. Masks, skeletons, and scenes from Christ’s life turned into the main elements of his labor. James Ensor. De lo real a lo imaginario emphasized the exceptional impact on the creative will that originated modern art. The Colección del Banco KBC de Bélgica presented in Mexico the complete series formed by 131 engravings and 154 lithographs of the great Belgian artist. 

Interpretations of Diego Rivera’s artworks by Ben Wood and Sietemedia 

The Museo Nacional de Arte presented Diego Rivera. Gran ilustrador, which was an opportunity to show to the public the result of an extensive work of compilation and documentation about the work of the artist who was born in Guanajuato. Diego Rivera is considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century in Mexico. The graphic work that was presented was selected taking into account their publication in different issues like books, magazines, journals, banners, and invitations that could be analyzed in a general way. One of the objectives of the museum was proposing it to the public so it could be revaluated and considered as one of the mechanisms of the exercise of drawing that, at the same time, involved an effort of communicative synthesis. Another objective, by presenting Diego Rivera. Gran ilustrador was to contextualize the graphic work of Rivera, in a way that the public had the opportunity to rebuild an essential framework for its historic and artistic interpretation. 

At the beginning of the 1920s, there was a free and legal trade of prehispanic pieces. This exhibition showed Diego Rivera’s side as a collector of pieces belonging to pre-Columbian cultures, which was a continuous interest during his lifetime. 

Luz de España. Colección de la Hispanic Society of America was an exhibition that offered a visual tour regarding the Spanish culture and its graphic milieu, gathering notable painters like El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Ignacio Zuloaga and Joaquín Sorolla. 

A hundred years after the “Incestuoso connubio con su madre la muerte”, the Museo Nacional de Arte could not help to homage Julio Ruelas by presenting the exhibition El viajero lúgubre. Julio Ruelas modernista 1870-1907. The museum gathered in one exhibition a selection of his oils, all of his engravings and more than a hundred inks done by the artist during his short but prolific career. Each section of the exhibition, proposed by the curatorial team, guided us through the colorful, painful, troubled and fanciful world that Ruelas created for the Revista Moderna, in which pages we can find in a good part his thematic inspiration. 

The exhibition Dibujos mexicanos. Colección del Museo Nacional de Arte showed 89 artworks done during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, among which there were sketches, landscapes, and portraits. Some of these works were never shown before and they elaborate on the creative processes and the skills of artists like Roberto Montenegro, Ramón Alva de la Canal, José María Velasco, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Antonio Fabrés, among many others.

The drawing collection of Rafael de Penagos was acquired at the same time that the museum broadened its interest to the decisive world of the graphic illustration in a time in which it led the profound change of image and identity present in modern societies. The museum also acquired an important collection of José Gutiérrez Solana, whose value not only relied on his own intrinsic quality and offering a complete walkthrough of the frequent iconography of Solana, but also the fact that it comes from a French collection. The latter showed the interest that the artist awoke in the international context. That was how Dibujos españoles del siglo XX. Colecciones Fundación MAPFRE was presented. It was a drawing collection that, even though it was open to new incorporations, it showed which were the interests of artworks in paper and the Spaniard art of this century. 

The exhibition LACMA: Obras maestras. 1750-1950. Pintura estadounidense del Museo de Arte del Condado de Los Ángeles was an exceptional opportunity to present in our country an important selection of this remarkable museum in the United States. The 71 artworks that formed this collection allowed to show the American art history from 1750 to 1950, a period of time that is a testimony of the British rule during the late colonial times, the years before the fight for independence, until the years after the Second World War.

The historical limits matched with the collection of the Museo Nacional de Arte, which also included the period of the viceregal art of the 16th century to the 18th century. Art’s history in the United States was frequently traced from the 20th century, with the peak of abstraction as a trigger of the artistic activity and a market that was generated from the American continent. This exhibition showed the previous events that originated and based the consolidation of this country in art’s international scene. Through this exhibition, it was possible to appreciate the artworks of artists that traveled to Europe and conjugated local creativity and European tradition. 

The collaboration of the Museo Nacional de Arte presented the exhibition Territorios de diálogo. España, México y Argentina. Entre los realismos y lo surreal 1930-1945, formed by artworks that belong to more than 25 institutions and 35 private collections of Mexico, Spain, Argentina, the United States and Cuba. The Museo Nacional de Arte was the inaugural venue of the exhibition, followed by the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and in the Palacio de la Merced in Córdoba, Spain.

The effort assumed by the institutions of these three cities assured the will to recognize the extent and diversity of the cultural bonds that join our countries. The exile of Spanish philosophers, artists, critics and literates in Mexico and Argentina due to Spanish Civil War encouraged the cultural exchange that was reflected in the artistic field. This was a reunion of paintings, photographs, drawings and graphic works, of the period between wars, in which it was possible to observe the elements that talk about the quality reached in the artistic production of these three countries. 

The Museo Nacional de Arte presented for Mexico and Latin America a retrospective exhibition dedicated to the genius from Aragón: Goya. It was embodied by 253 artworks, consisting of oils, drawings, and engravings that came from 25 museums and different private collections of the American and European continents. The public was able to contemplate representative artworks from different periods and artistic styles of Goya during his long creative lifespan.

Among the pieces exhibited, the artworks done for the Real Fábrica de Tapices de Santa Bárbara with traditionalist themes stand out, along with a group of sketches of religious paintings. These paintings were commissions and they show a creative and free plenitude that was only achieved by Rembrandt and Durero. The firsts editions of his four series of engravings were gathered, along with the last lithographs that he made during his exile in France.

In this exhibition, curated by James Oles, 66 artworks were shown and analyzed from four key themes, allowing a better understanding of post-revolutionary Mexican art. The first one entitled “Redescubrir lo popular” referred to the promotion of crafts by the urban elites. “Reinventar la nación” explored how the art was used to forge a new national identity; “Regresar al clasicismo” included images of allegoric figures in artworks that make reference to a noble Greco-Roman past. Lastly, “Retratar el ser” focused on a diverse group of portraits and self-portraits.  

The exhibition Francisco Gutiérrez 1906-1945 gathered 235 artworks as part of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the death of the artist who was born in the city of Oaxaca in 1906. The chronological framework of Francisco Gutiérrez’s professional life took place in the 1930s and mid-forties. That was a moment in which great personalities of the cultural world coexisted, both in music and literature, as well as in plastic arts and architecture. He had a life of struggles and disappointments, always motivated by the creative inspiration that was not diminished, neither by his humble condition nor by his few formal studies. He took advantage of the time during the course of his short artistic life (1929-1945) by venturing into the techniques of engraving, gouache, tempering, oil, and drawing.

With the exhibition El espejo simbolista. Europa y México. 1870-1920, the Museo Nacional de Arte decided to undertake an honest and open dialogue between Mexican art and its European contemporaries. This dialogue, that was profoundly enriching, began by the movement known as Symbolism. The exhibition showed fascinating analogies and correlations between the artworks of Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes, Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley, Burne-Jones and Odilon Redon, among others, with the works of Mexican artists like Diego Rivera, Julio Ruelas, Roberto Montenegro, Saturnino Herrán, Germán Gedovius, Fidencio Nava or Ángel Zárraga.

It was possible to appreciate that the Mexican artworks that form the permanent collection of the Museo Nacional de Arte, as well as private collections and museums of our country are nourished by a new expressive dimension achieved by contrasting them with European artworks. These artworks came from more than 40 museums and private collections of Spain, France, Belgium, Austria, the United States, Holland, Great Britain, Poland, Italy, and Mexico.