The Mexicanidad movement took root in the hearts of artists, poets, photographers, and musicians. They experimented with style and imagery and actively contributed to the creation of narratives linking Indigenous and mestizo cultures to the founding of the new modern nation. Aware of the global movement of modernism—which stressed innovation in form, a tendency toward abstraction, and an emphasis on materials and process—Mexican modernists turned to ancient artworks as models for abstraction and as guides for figurative realism. Muralists portrayed this style on a grand public scale, while other artists explored these ideas in their paintings, prints, and photographs. Diego Rivera worked in all of these media throughout his career.
Diego Rivera
Mexican, 1886–1957
The Last Hour, 1915
Oil on canvas
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
As a young artist, Rivera traveled in 1910 to Paris, where he joined the circle of avant-garde artists. The Last Hour demonstrates the Cubist style of his work at that time. Everyday objects such as a book, a bottle, and a rolled newspaper have been reduced to flattened geometric shapes, animated by their off-kilter placement and the use of subtle contrasts of color and texture.
[Artwork Description: Large oil painting on canvas. This still life uses abstraction, a flattened plane, and varying texture to represent items on a table. The background shows a gray floor and a corner of dark green walls. A large tan background sits in front of them and is the backdrop for the items. A gourd shaped vase that is light turquoise on the bottom and a marbled greenish yellow color on the top sits on the top left with a black shadow like shape to the left which has more sharp angles than the vase. Next to it on the right is a silver shape that looks like a vase with a small handle on the top right side filled with a large bloom, shaped similarly to lilacs. The white paint is heavily textured on the bloom and smooth on the vase. The black shadow to the right and gray to the left have more sharp angles than do the objects. Below to the right is an open book with a black cover and cream colored pages. A black rectangle lies below. The top and right edge of the book pages are bluish white with heavy texture. From the top of the book to the bottom right of the canvas is a yellow triangle. To the left of the book is a black object that is square on top and rounded on bottom. It has a silver circle at the top with some silver lines extending out from it. Right below the circle is a crumpled square of white paper. Under this is a white scrap of paper with capital letters reading “Ultima hora”. Below it is a tan square with red triangles along the top and bottom edge and a black tie. The initials D.M.R. appear on the tan portion of the left side in stenciled letters. There is a light green strip of paint behind it on the left and tan on the right. Light appears to come from multiple sources, inconsistently illuminating the various objects.]
Diego Rivera
Mexican, 1886–1957
Portrait of Cristina Kahlo, 1934
Pastel on paper
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
Cristina, Frida Kahlo’s youngest sister, modeled for Rivera and was one of his lovers. He painted her figure in multiple murals. Here Rivera depicts Cristina in a modernist style that blends abstraction with the geometric features of ancient stone sculptures.
[Artwork Description: Pastel portrait of Frida Kahlo’s sister Christina Kahlo. The brown tinted paper becomes part of the portrait. Christina is viewed from the neck up, head held high, gaze fixed forward, but slightly to the left. She has thick dark hair that is smooth and flat on top and then curls into a thick gathering along the base of her head. She has plucked, curved, black eyebrows that continue down alongside her rounded nose. She has eyeliner and eye shadow around her lime green eyes. Her left eye has a bright pink corner. Her lips are pursed and she has a slight dimple in her chin. Her shirt and neck are outlined with simple thin black lines. Rose brown shading highlights the edges of her neck and face and fills in around her mouth and cheeks. It is also prominent under her eyebrows. The artist’s signature is in cursive in the bottom right corner.]
Gunther Gerzso
Mexican, 1915–2000
Archaic Landscape, 1956
Oil on Masonite
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
Gerzso found inspiration in the abstract forms of ancient art and architecture, especially pre-Hispanic sculptures of polished stone and jade that feature interlocking geometric shapes.
[Artwork Description: A dark abstract painting consisting of many vertical layers. The lower third is the darkest of the painting. There seem to be two figures in the scene in the lower third. Both a light color with square black eyes. One is postured like an animal on all fours with one black square eye in profile, the other is upright with two square eyes. Behind them is a flat black abstract face, they all appear to be in a room. Above them is layers and layers of tan and gray and white abstraction that could be a city. White stucco walls, with small windows and staircases and doors all layered on top of each other fitting. The shapes are primarily squares and rectangles and other shapes with angles rather than curves. There are a few cream and gold shapes and a lot of smaller black squares.]
Gunther Gerzso
Mexican, 1915–2000
Portrait of Jacques Gelman, 1957
Oil on canvas
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
Gerzso worked as a set designer on several of Gelman’s films. He painted this portrait, composed in his typical style of interlocking shapes, as a birthday present for the producer. Gerzso identified the red column at the center as Gelman’s wife, Natasha, her hands reaching to the right to hold Jacques’s rose-colored heart.
[Artwork Description: An abstract oil painting, mostly a cream color with accents of brown, black, red and icy blue. There is an illustrated black human figure, tall and thin on the left side. The figure looks as if it’s a shadow without definition of arms or legs, more just a long slender body with a head. There is a purple square with four thin horizontal lines breaking into the square behind the figure. Below the purple square are two light colored boxes with smaller gold squares in them. Above the purple box is a thin vertical line extending at a slight angle in the direction of another gold box, all in an off white area of the painting. To the right, is a long vertical red rectangle with many shades of red boxes within it. In the upper right of the painting are many more shapes, a square black box with a brown box in it floats on the white background. Below that is a tan rectangle with an elongated black double diamond shape. Next to that are some shapes that have a texture like the bark of a birch tree, white with thin vertical slightly wavy lines. Beneath that box is a dark purple box with red and pink shapes in it. The tones and colors match the red vertical box next to it. Near the bottom right of the painting is a box filled with light blue and pale purple cubes that fade to white. There is also a small black square, and a horizontal black line that extends from the figure that appears shadow-like.]
Julien Levy
American, 1906–1981
Catalogue for the Frida Kahlo Exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, 1938
Cardboard printing
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
This small catalogue was produced for Kahlo’s first solo exhibition, held at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. Levy had seen Kahlo’s paintings the previous year and invited her to have an exhibition. The preface to the catalogue was written by André Breton, the leader of the Surrealist movement. Breton visited Rivera and Kahlo in Mexico City and firmly believed Kahlo’s paintings were Surrealist, an association she rejected.
[Artwork Description: Tan double page spread from Frida Kahlo Exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery. On the right a title page with Frida Kahlo in large letters with (Frida Rivera) underneath. Below smaller letters read: November First to Fifteenth Julien Levy Gallery 15 East 57 New York. Two filigree patterns fill the space below. On the left is a list of works from the exhibition. 1. Between the Curtains 2. Fulang Chang and Myself 3. The Square is Theirs 4. I With My Nurse 5. They Ask for Planes and Only Get Straw Wings 6. I Belong to My Owner 7. My Family 8. The Heart 9. My Dress was There Hanging 10. What the Water Gave Me 11. Ixcuhintli Dog with Me 12. Pitahayas 13. Tunas 14. Food from the Earth 15. Remembrance of the Open Wound 16. The Lost Desire 17. Birth 18. Dressed Up for Paradise 19. She Plays Alone 20. Passionately in Love 21. Burbank – American Fruit Maker 22. Xochitl 23. The Frame 24. Eye 25. Survivor]
Rufino Tamayo
Mexican, 1899–1991
Portrait of Natasha Gelman, 1948
Oil and chalk on Masonite
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
[Artwork Description: A portrait of a woman with pale peach colored skin and blonde short hair wearing a off the shoulder dress while seated in a chair. The woman faces the viewer with her eyes appearing to be closed. She has thin brows that continue downward to define her nose. She wears her hair pulled back and arranged low on either side of her face with a large, rolled curl on the top right. She wears a choker style, white necklace that highlights her clavicle. Her black, cap sleeved dress skims over her shoulders and plunges to a deep V. A ruffle of white fabric fills the deepest part of the V. Her right arm crosses her body and her hand rests on her left arm. Her left hand sits in her lap. The figure sits in a partially seen chair that has a light edged scrolled back with black upholstery. The background is bare of detail going from lighter at top to darker gray at the bottom. The portrait is stylized and spare in detail.]
Gunther Gerzso
Mexican, 1915–2000
Id, 1961
Oil and sand on canvas
Private collection
Following a trip to Greece in 1959, Gerzso painted a group of works inspired by the ruins he saw there. He used natural materials such as sand and pumice to suggest the deteriorating ancient structures. This painting is titled after the Freudian term for the deepest level of the unconscious and speaks to Gerzso’s belief in the human psyche as the source for artistic expression.
[Artwork Description: A textured abstract painting. The middle half of the painting is a cream color field, not a solid color, but with many slight shadows and subtleties. The bottom of this color is slightly rounded and butts up against a more golden color that has similar nuances of color shading and fading to its darkest in the very lower right of the paining. A small vertical highlight is in the bottom left, the brightest color of the whole painting. The top quarter of the painting is a gray-black color field, splotchy with a few darker spots. The bottom of the black field is not a straight line, it’s two small humps with a slight protrusion in the middle that fades to black. There is a charcoal line drawn that separates the top two color blocks.]
Carlos Mérida
Guatemalan, 1891–1985
Festival of the Birds, 1959
Polished board
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
Mérida created large-scale murals and smaller works, combining the geometric abstraction of European modernism with pre-Hispanic aesthetics. In this painting, the birds above the figures’ outstretched hands recall the image of a bird found in Mayan texts that Mérida studied.
[Artwork Description: Bright abstract painting of figures made up of geometric shapes holding abstract shapes representing birds. The bright red background creates a striking contrast to the tan and black figures. There are three figures spaced across the width of the canvas with the one in the center being the tallest and the one on the right being much shorter. They have black heads with white eye, nose, and mouth. The legs and feet of the figure on the left are connected to the body and the left leg appears to be outstretched, toes facing up. One arm is raised to the left, with a bent elbow and three thick, geometric fingers. A large geometric shape represents a bird sitting on the head of the left figure, facing to the left. Its body is tan and it has a small round black eye. Its triangular head flows into a curved neck and triangular body, with a pointed tail and a black triangle as a wing. The right arm of the middle figure ends in a square and supports the base of the bird. The figure’s left arm is outstretched above its head and it has a large rectangular thumb and three claw shaped fingers. Below to the right the third shorter figure stands, arms raised, no hands. A tan triangle sits on the figure’s left hand and the top tip is black which becomes another bird’s wing. The bird has a triangular head, a small black round eye, and a fan shaped body and tail. The middle of the painting has a large tan rectangle and two smaller rectangular strips that are composed of multiple tan, cream, red, and black geometric shapes layered on top of each other. There are also seven thin yellow lines that flow throughout the painting at different angles.]
Carlos Mérida
Guatemalan, 1891–1985
Variation on an Old Theme, 1960
Oil on canvas
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
Here, Mérida abandoned any distinct sense of figuration and instead created a composition of intersecting abstract shapes and planes.
[Artwork Description: Vertical abstract oil painting with a cream background with slightly darker cream marbled into it. A series of organic and geometric shapes that are black, brown, deep blue, or dark burgundy fill the canvas, overlapping with each other. Different shapes can be seen depending on which objects are focused on. The shapes come together to create triangles, circles, and other shapes. The paint is thick and highly reflective with areas that seem to sparkle. The top row, left to right: A brown 9 with a burgundy rectangle at the bottom and a top that comes to a point in a triangle; a shape loosely resembling a W with a thick deep blue rectangle as the left prong, a blue upside down triangle as the middle prong, and a thin, curved brown prong on the right with a brown base; a large brown shape that resembles the bottom of a capital A and then sits on a black shape that resembles a 9 with a tail curving to a point at the right; next is a black rectangle with a hole at the top and a base that curves out to a point on the left. The second row: a horizontal blue oval sits on a steep line that slants downward to the right. Below the oval is a thin vertical rectangle with a small space then a blue squarish shape sitting on top of a vertical burgundy rectangle next to a tall thin black triangle. Next a black shape that resembles a bird, wings partially stretched out and a square fanned tail swooping downward into a black curved shape with a burgundy vertical rectangle. Above a small brown square sits to the left of a small burgundy rectangle which connects to a tall thin black triangle, then a black shape that resembles the blade of an ice skate with a pointed tip on the right and a tall burgundy rectangle extending from the middle of it and a burgundy rectangle and a large brown rectangle below. The third row starts with a dark brown shape resembling a lowercase n with a point extending at the top left. After a space of cream background, a tiny black triangle points upward, touching the tip of an even smaller red triangle that hangs upside down. The right connects to a larger vertical burgundy rectangle that shares a side with a tall black triangle. The fourth row starts with a horizontal black rectangle that has a triangular pointed top at the right and a short square jutting out from the bottom right. A burgundy base of a triangle connects at the corner of a square and has a black triangle on the right of the base. Next to it a black vertical rectangle flows downward and is covered in the middle by a black shape that resembles the head and partial body of a whale, next a thin gray line separates the cream background. The fifth row starts with a very long upside down brown triangle without a point. After the cream background is a shape that resembles a 9 with a base that curves and thins as it reaches the edge of the canvas. Next to it is a black rectangle that protrudes from the top right of the 9. It has a small brown base of a triangle that has a black top sitting on top. To the right is a thick dark brown shape that resembles a capital J. A similar figure which is slightly smaller protrudes from the top right. To the right a large black triangle flows downward, the tip off the canvas and a burgundy shape that looks like half a bullet sitting vertically protrudes to the left. On the right a half circle connects to the flat top of the upside down triangle and connects to a tall vertical brown rectangle.]
Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Mexican, 1902–2002
Frida at the Picasso Exhibition at the Society of Modern Art, Mexico, about 1944
Gelatin silver print
Throckmorton Fine Art, New York
[Artwork Description: This photograph shows Frida Kahlo seated in front of a large abstract painting at a museum exhibition of works by Picasso. The painting of a nude male in an acrobatic position dominates the right side of the photo with Kahlo seated to the left. She is dressed in traditional clothing with a dark rebozo fully wrapped around the upper part of her body and a decorated dark colored skirt below with a lighter color skirt underneath. Her braids are pinned on top of her head. A small plant peeks out from behind her in the corner of the room and a table juts away from her and out of the frame on the left side.]
Lola Álvarez Bravo
Mexican, 1903–1993
The Hangover, 1945
Gelatin silver print
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
Photographing what she described as “the life I found before me,” Lola Álvarez Bravo made carefully composed scenes of everyday life throughout Mexico. She portrayed people at work, at leisure, and in spontaneous moments while experimenting with sharp contrasts of light. Her photographs reveal her larger interest in dignifying Mexico’s working and agrarian classes.
[Artwork Description: A young man is asleep with his forehead resting on the counter of a concrete outdoor bar. He is the only figure visible, seated on a plain, high bar stool with his legs bent at the knee, legs together and dangling. His bare feet are crossed and hover above the dirt on the ground. His arms are bent and rest in his lap. He is dressed in a loose white cotton shirt with the short sleeves rolled up to his armpits and loose white pants.The bar is roughly textured with a dark awning supported by angular rods. The roof of the bar extends off to the side, visible at the back.]
Lola Álvarez Bravo
Mexican, 1903–1993
Shark Hunters (Acapulco, Gro.), 1950
Gelatin silver print
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
[Artwork Description: Three young males are shown on the sand along the shoreline of a beach after a successful shark hunt. The figure on the left stands upright with his arm gripping a fishing pole and wadded up net, the shark at his feet. His two fellow fishermen are to the right of the pole, bent in effort as they pull a rope that’s tied to the shark’s body. All three young men are bare-chested and wear only white swim trunks. Their narrow shadows form long dark lines on the smooth light-colored sand. In the distance on the far left the white froth of a wave breaks along the beach. Far on the horizon on the right is a gray mass that suggests mountains. The sky is a light grey with no prominent clouds.]
Lola Álvarez Bravo
Mexican, 1903–1993
Little Bulls, n.d.
Gelatin silver print
The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th-Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Foundation
[Artwork Description: Two small wood sculptures of bulls are shown on a curved tabletop in an art exhibit. The figures, positioned next to each other, sit on plain stick legs. The bodies are rounded and basket-like with sticks woven around a solid middle portion and head.]