Creations In Silver - By Dona Eva Martinez
The designs of Doña Eva Martinez are mostly 18th and 19th century with some pre-hispanic symbolism, predominantly earrings. They are of pure silver and treated to give an antique finish. The designs a...
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Francisco Toledo
It would be a terrible oversight to write an "Arts in Mexico" column without paying special tribute to Francisco Toledo, one of Mexico's greatest living artists. In the eyes of many, he is Mexico's gre...
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From A Mexican Perspective - The Vision of Adolfo Best Maugard
During the heady days that followed the Mexican revolution, the air was filled with fervent nationalism. The euphoria of new beginnings brought out the best in creative vision from talent that fed on t...
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Jose Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera - The Murals
The art and attitudes of the two great Mexican muralists, Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco could not be more different. Rivera was a classicist, Orozco an expressionist. Rivera was optimistic, Or...
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Mexican lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada: Past and present
In one month, on November 2, it will be "El Dia de los Muertos" (the Day of the Dead), and Jose Guadalupe Posada, or Don Lupe as he was known to his friends, a poor but prolific printm...
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Creating is being: Mexican artist Raymundo Becerril Porras
"For the simple fact that we are sensitive beings, we can't stop making things, creating, seeing the world in another manner. The faculty of being, of walking through the world, of seeing is born in the habit of creating - little by little - something, anything."
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Javier Vasquez - Jazzamoart- The Jazz Painter Of Mexico City
For the Mexican painter Javier Vasquez, painting is performance - a performance done to jazz. As he paints, his hand and brush flash across the canvas, echoing and replicating in paint the rhythms and ...
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The Family That Carves Together.... Eliseo Castillo, Enedina Castillo Castillo
"Does your husband ever carve nudes," I asked Enedina Castillo Castillo, only half jokingly. She grinned up at me with those wise eyes.
"Once he carved a David that looked like the one by Miguel Angel...
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Jose Clemente Orozco (1863 - 1949)
La pasión de Orozco por el arte se manifestó cuando, a los siete años, se mudó con su familia a Ciudad de México, donde pudo conocer el trabajo de Posadas. Después de estudiar agricultura y arqui...
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David Alfaro Siqueiros ( 1896 - 1974 )
David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974).
Fue el muralista más activo, en cuanto a la política se refiere. Siqueiros fue encarcelado unas siete veces y otras exiliado, a causa de sus creencias Marx...
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Diego Rivera (1886-1957)
Diego Rivera (1886-1957)
Habiendo estudiado arte en una escuela oficial, Rivera viajó a Europa, estableciendose en París, donde conoció a las principales figuras de la época, incluyendo a m...
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The fiery spirit of Mexico's Carmen Mondragon
Known as Nahui Ollin, Mondragón is remembered as a figure in the art scene of the 1920s and as an uninhibited woman who paved the way for female liberation in Mexico.
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Labor of love: the work of Mexican photographer Edna Vite
In a world where greed has become commonplace, it is uplifting to meet a person who wants her work to serve as a conduit of love.
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Did You Know? The centenary of the birth of artist Juan O'Gorman
Juan O'Gorman was born on July 6, 1905, in Coyoacán, Mexico City. His father, Cecil Crawford O'Gorman, was a mining engineer and artist of Irish origin; his mother was Mexican. Juan was educated at th...
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The legacy of Agustin Victor Casasola (Photographer 1874 - 1938)
Agustín Victor Casasola was not a painter or a poet or one of the many intellectuals or revolutionaries during the early decades of the twentieth century who consciously strove to forge a Mexican identity. Yet, as witness and recorder of those tumultuous years, his influence was as great and may prove to be more lasting.
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A legend in his time: composer Agustin Lara
Music is the universal language that crosses all barriers and penetrates the heart. There was no composer who understood the emotional draw of music better than Agustín Lara, and no song writer who ha...
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Mexican Folk Art from Oaxacan Artist Families by Arden Aibel Rothstein and Anya Leah Rothstein
There are hundreds of photos of all kinds of artistic output, from pottery to wood carvings, from basket weaving to candle making, and lots more but we're given a much closer look at the actual creators of all this work. We're treated to wonderful works featuring mermaids, clowns, devils, angels, fishes, skeletons, Biblical scenes, animals and birds of all kinds, and even ladies of the night. These are all used to decorate masks, bedspreads, candles, baskets, jewelry, furniture, statues, toys, pottery and clothing and much, much more plus some 87 brief biographies of each of the artists.
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Mexico's comparative arts through the ages
The following comparative time line provides an orientation to the roots, elements and development of the rich artistic heritage of Mexico.
The time line presentation allows for a sense of movement a...
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The photography of Manual Alvarez Bravo (1902 - 2002)
Manuel Alvarez Bravo is not as well known for his portraits of artists and intellectuals, but many are dazzling. One of his finest portraits is that of Frida Kahlo, dressed in necklaces and flowing clothes, leaning against a table with a curious glass ball. He probably met Kahlo through her father, Wilhelm Kahlo, to whom he was introduced by Hugo Brehme, his teacher at the start of his career. He and Frida were to become friends.
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Frida: A Novel Based on the Life of Frida Kahlo by Barbara Mujica
"Although events in Mexican history and in Frida's life provide the general framework, many incidents and characters portrayed here are the author's inventions. Although many of Frida's biographers mention her younger sister, Christina, I have reinvented the youngest Kahlo girl to make her a perspicacious witness to Frida's life. My intention in writing Frida was to capture the essence of Frida Kahlo's personality, not to document her life. I was particularly interested in what it might be like to be the unexceptional sister of such an exceptional woman…."
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Purepecha fiesta In Ajijic, Jalisco
They may not have conquered Ajijic in the old days, but the Purepecha never gave up. They didn’t even ever surrender to the mighty Aztecs. Now, they are seeking to take Ajijic by artistic stealth, beginning next month when a special Purepecha Fiesta is to be held in Ajijic plaza. The Fiesta begins on October 12, “Dia de La Raza” (literally "Day of our Race"), a national holiday observing the survival and resistance of the indigenous Mexican.
read moreEmbryography of a jeweler Raúl Ybarra
It is perhaps only in the "advanced" civilizations that artists are elevated above craftsmen, with the former thought to be leading the cultural vanguard while the latter are only practicing traditiona...
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Did You Know? Mexico in the Guinness world records: part two
An earlier column described several Guinness records and their connection to Mexico and Mexicans. This month's column examines four more very different Guinness records which do not involve quite as mu...
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Diego, Frida and the Mexican School
Awarded
June, 1999
Mexico City in the 1920s stood on the threshold of a new era. Although the country had won its independence from Spain in 1821, it became o...
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Out of Mexico's past: Photographs that speak volumes (Hugo Brehme and others)
Anyone out there on the information highway heard of an American photographer named North? Worked in Mexico, made dozens of daguerreotypes of the cities, churches and countryside circa mid-1800s? Gina ...
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