Mexican Winter

The doctrine of "art for art's sake" has had rough sledding in Mexico. With Mexicans, it has been religious or social art that counts. Confectioners mold candy into shapes of skulls and flowers for feast-day celebrations. Muralists line public buildings with vehement histories of oppression and revolution. For the rest, nudes, still lifes, etc. were considered mere frilly decoration. In 1922 Mexico's Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters & Sculptors put the Mexican doctrine in writing, publicly repudiated "art for art's sake," and pledged themselves to paint murals "for the people." Among signers were Mexico's big three: Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros. Backed by the world's most art-conscious Government, they made a slambang success.

But lately some of Mexico's younger artists have strayed from the aging big three's reservation. If the pictures they paint are not purely for art's sake, they are at any rate more personal than propagandist. This week Manhattan galleries got their first down payment on what promises to be a winterful of Mexican art. The exhibitions proved again Mexico City's right to rank with Paris and Manhattan as a world capital of art.

Of the big three, Diego Rivera, now 58, contributed a modest, cleverly patterned water color entitled Indian Mother and Children. Last year he climbed down from his mural scaffoldings to paint sexy nudes for Mexico City's swank nightclub, Giro's. Now he is doing a vast historical mural for Mexico's National Palace. Siqueiros, in the most traditionally political painting displayed, showed a mountainous Indian girl clasping a field of oil wells to her bosom. Patriotically entitled Sunrise of Mexico, it has already been snapped up by International Business Machines Corp.

At 26, Guillermo Meza was one of the youngest and most gifted of the Mexicans shown in Manhattan. His masterful painting of a surf-wearied swimmer got some of the ebb and crash of its title, The Sea. Meza took up painting because he did not have enough money for music lessons. He wanted to be a strolling musician; now he paints twelve hours a day.

Orozco, wintering in Manhattan (among other ambitions, he wants to "paint a snowfall"), boycotted both shows. Says he of the new Mexican easel painters: "The boys want to make money."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.