Double Exposure/Doble Exposición – Rostros de la Ruptura (The Faces of The Break)
at Arocena Museum of Coahuila, Mexico
Arocena Museum of Coahuila, Mexico, is introducing Double Exposure / Doble Exposición, an exhibition curated by Emma Cecilia García Krinsky from the FEMSA Collection that includes a fine selection of portraits of artists like RufinoTamayo, Carlos Merida and Gunther Gerzso, which preceded the movement known as La Ruptura (The Rupture) and those who staged it. This way, the exhibition reconstructed parallel highlights of this genre in Mexico photography history that includes teachers of different generations born in this country, as Manuel and Lola Alvarez Bravo, Graciela Iturbide, Flor Garduño, but foreigners as Edward Weston and Bernard Silverstein.
"The pictures presented here are apparently small pieces of paper, however, bring us great moments with fascination, not just the plastic, but the picture in our country," says curator García Krinsky. Reviving the faces of The Rupture poses "an eternal theme for art: the idea of the portrait as a reflection of the soul. In these images, we see portrayed as both the implicit presence of which portrays the meeting of two creative forces: a double exposure."
The curatorial texts of the showroom describe how, at the beginning of the fifties, generated a fruitful environment for discussion and controversy over the change in the national art. Young claimed the stylistic individualism and renewal in the paint. Felguérez Manuel, Lilia Carrillo, Vlady, Gironella, José Luis Cuevas and Fernando García Ponce and Héctor Xavier gathered in the Prisse Gallery, besides being a commercial space, was a space for discussion. Proteo Gallery and Antonio Souza were substantive in disseminating the works of these painters.
In 1961, John Martin, encouraged by the advice of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, opened the gallery that bears his name, with the intention of running a small group of avant-garde artists, who drove with greater efficiency, supported by texts critics of Juan García Ponce. Martin was also one of the first exposed photographs. Other critics such as Rachel Tibol often portrayed by photographers encouraged the birth and development of the movement of Rupture featuring artists such as Vicente Rojo, Pedro and Rafael Coronel, Jose Luis Cuevas, Gabriel Ramirez, Nadine Prado, Rodolfo Nieto, Leonel Góngora and Thomas Parra.
Fernando Gamboa in 1970 organized the Mexico Pavilion at the International Fair in Osaka, Japan. The artists represented the contemporary art of Mexico were: Brian Nissen, Peyrí, Manuel Felguérez, Lilia Carrillo, Vlady, Roger von Gunten, Fernando García Ponce, Arnaldo Coen, Gilberto Aceves Navarro, Francisco Icaza and Francisco Manuel Corzo and Felguérez. Early in this decade Felguérez led, together with Vicente Rojo and Kazuya Sakai, geometric motion, attended by Federico Silva and Helen Escobedo. This movement strongly culminated in the exhibition "The geometric Mexico," presented at the Museum of Modern Art in Havana in 1976. Among the young speakers were Sebastian Ignacio Salazar, Francisco Moya, Roberto Real de León, Fernando Gonzalez Gortázar and many other artists who followed this trend. The significance of the movement lasted over several decades, with an emphasis on sculptural and monumental work. The portraits by great photographers over a period covering from 1930 to 2008 revived the faces of the renewal of painting in Mexico.
