Fusiones

David Alfaro Siqueiros was an artist deeply committed to creating a revolutionary form of public art in tune with the technological changes of his time –that is, an art linked to mass society, collectivity, the modern world and its technical possibilities. Although early in his career he recognized the profound impact that “the tangible miracles of contemporary life” – as he called them in a manifesto published in the journal Vida Americana (American Life) in 1921 – would have on the aesthetic field, it was his experience within the industrial society in the United States during the 1930s that led him towards experimentation and the use of eminently modern techniques and materials, such as automotive paint, spray gun, film, and photography.

Siqueiros believed that in the near future societies around the would recover the character of an "integral" or "unitary" plastic art –a notion in which urbanism, architecture, sculpture, painting, and polychromy would be unified by the social function of art and science, hand in hand with the most innovative technological tools. However, in practice he faced the problem of how to execute a modern mural painting in historical buildings. In his extensive 1951 essay Cómo se pinta un mural (How to paint a mural), the artist argued that in these cases, what takes place is a "fusion of an old architecture with a modern or contemporary style painting."

This exhibition seeks to inquire Siqueiros' interest in this fusion of times, techniques, and spaces, based on his approaches to photography and cinematography. Much of it traces how the muralist employed fusions and montages for the creation, conceptualization and dissemination of his works, through a selection of pieces and materials drawn from SAPS’ artistic and archival collection.

At the same time, the exhibition brings these works and documents into dialogue with our own present through pieces by five contemporary artists. These works engage with the muralist’s concerns and ideas by exploring new forms of perception driven by art and technology, the notion of the spectator in motion, the use of cinematographic procedures, and formal experimentation with techniques and materials.

— Esteban King Álvarez, guest curator

Artists in the exhibition: Valentina Díaz, Fabiola Menchelli, Daniel Monroy Cuevas, Ismael Sentíes and Fabiola Torres- Alzaga, David Alfaro Siqueiros and SAPS Archival Collection Centro de Investigación y

Documentación Siqueiros (CIDS).