EL ESPÍRITÚ DEL 22: UN SIGLO DEL MURALISMO EN SAN ILDEFONSO
México, D.F. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM; Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 2022. b/w and color plates, color pict. boards. Item #116965
Published by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the book The Spirit of 22: A Century of Muralism in San Ildefonso, is very significant because it deals with the great works created in the College of San Ildefonso, and recognizes that in this movement women were not only models and assistants, as is commonly believed, but many did their own work. The researcher of the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (Inbal), Dina Comisarenco, who collaborated in the publication, maintains in an interview that in addition to showing studies on the artists who were part of the muralist movement in its origins, the volume highlights the many intersections that existed in the 1920s between the movement for women's rights and artistic creation, which are what laid the foundations for the emergence, in the 1930s, of female muralism. Unlike other books on muralism, which focus only on the so-called big three – Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco – renowned specialists wrote detailed studies of Fernando Leal, Jean Charlot, Fermín Revueltas and Alva de la Canal, as well as other artists who acted as assistants at that time, such as Xavier Guerrero and Máximo Pacheco. Regarding the intervention of women in art and social movements, the art historian Dina Comisarenco considers the feminist movement of that time to be important, because it allows us to understand the complaints and the parallel and complementary aspirations that the artists were experiencing in their own times, and interpret their works according to their social contexts. The study of the relationships that exist between social and artistic movements is key to recovering the deep meaning of many of the works of women artists with their content of dissent and resistance, explains the author of the text Women, artists and activists, which is included in the book. According to the researcher, there are no clear or absolute differences between the styles and themes of female and male muralism, but the study of those created by female artists helps us understand and recognize the breadth of the muralist movement that goes much further of the nationalist historical theme and the socialist realism with which it is commonly identified, to include even abstract works, such as that of Lilia Carrillo, or surrealists, such as that of Leonora Carrington.
Price: $95.00