French Landscapes from Corot to Monet Reviewing the Paris Salon of 1868, the novelist and critic Émile Zola pronounced classical landscape painting dead, “murdered by life and truth.” This, for Zola, was not a lament but rather a celebration. In place of carefully composed traditional landscapes, Zola celebrated the rise of a new kind school of landscape painting. The key…

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man The work by Rubén Ortiz-Torres (b. 1964), an internationally-renowned artist, curator, and author, featured in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man was developed from the early eighties to the early nineties when the artist was inspired by the punk scene in Mexico City. As with many artists of his generation,…

Selections from the School of Paris, Prints and Drawings, ca. 1900-1950 In the first half of the 20th century, Paris was the center of the art world. French artists like Henri Matisse and Robert Delaunay constituted one aspect of the avant-garde, but the many foreign artists working in the city were equally important. These foreigners, ranging from the Spaniard Pablo…

Art in Southern California, 1945 to 1980 Experiments in Abstraction: Art in Southern California, 1945 to 1980, addresses a generation of California-based artists who explored the possibilities of abstraction. In the years following World War II, a distinctive style of art, identified as Hard-Edge painting, was developed by pioneering artists such as Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Oskar Fischinger, Helen Lundeberg,…

from the Andrés Blaisten Collection The Andrés Blaisten Collection is one of the premiere collections of 20th-century Mexican art. Assembled over the last 25 years, the collection normally resides at its permanent home at the Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco.  This exhibition features a selection of 80 paintings dated between 1907 and 1962 from this renowned collection as part of a…

Huichol Art on Wheels Vochol: Huichol Art on Wheels offers the Museum an opportunity to highlight the artistic ingenuity of one of the many indigenous cultures of Mexico. The Huichol culture includes approximately 26,000 people who live in the states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango, and Zacatecas. They have traditionally been a nomadic culture, but in more recent times they have…

Photographs of Southern California by scott b. davis While davis (who uses a specialized shorthand in which he forgoes capitalization) is inspired by the topography of various parts of the United States, he frequently uses Southern California as his muse. Taken at night with a large-format camera, certain photographs of Southern California document iconic aspects of the region including the…

This thematic installation of still-life paintings presents highlights from the Museum’s 20th-century galleries, which are currently undergoing renovation. Pictorial arrangements of objects from nature and daily life have not, traditionally, enjoyed the same status as religious or historical subjects. The still-life, however, has remained a pillar of painting since its establishment as an independent genre in the 17th century. One…

Asian Modernism and the Art of Kūboku and Hisako Takaku The artist Kuboku Takaku (1908–1993) perfected the ancient Japanese technique of wax-resist dyeing to create textile paintings on obi, kimono, and screens. His works merged Japanese subjects with cubist and modernist styles, and he was the only textile artist who effectively transitioned from the Fine Arts circles of the 1930s…

This winter, an important group of Modern French paintings from a local collection will be juxtaposed with the highlights of the Gluck Collection, which has long been part of the Museum’s permanent collection. The loans will include paintings by Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Paul Serusier, Fernand Leger, Édouard Vuillard, and Pierre Bonnard, which will be shown alongside other Post-Impressionist and…