‘Paint the Revolution’ exhibit highlighting Mexican change to bow at Philadelphia Art Museum

Because the Mexican Revolution was not in fact televised, it was instead recorded in art form.

This fall the Philadelphia Museum of Art will showcase “Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism: 1910-1950,” an exhibition that details how and why murals in and around Mexico City reflected the drastic changes and upheaval that helped usher Mexico into the 20th century. The exhibit, which will feature works by such greats as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, David Alfaro Siquerios and Jose Clemente Orozco, will bow in Philadelphia Oct. 25 and run until Jan. 8. Mark Castro of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is curating the exhibit, which will be the largest of Mexican modernist artwork ever in the United States.

The exhibit is a joint effort of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Curators from both institutions are working together to allow visitors to more fully appreciate the tremendous artwork borne out of adversity and political and social turmoil. Dafne Cruz Porcini is serving as curator from Museo del Palacio Bellas Artes.

According to MexicanHistory.org, one of the most famous episodes of the Mexican Revolution occurred on March 6, 1911, when Pancho Villa and his men rode into battle with federal forces claiming “Viva la revolucion!”

The site claims that as many as 2 million people are estimated to have died in the decades of internecine conflict that followed. But as equally important as the fighting itself was the cultural masterworks that came of it.

Some of Rivera’s most famous works are warehoused inside the Museo del Palacio Bellas Artes. Rivera and Kahlo, who were sympathetic to unionized labor and reflected as much in their art, often incorporated their political beliefs into their art. Several of his works even include representations of Lenin and other communist figureheads like Trotsky.

Rivera and Kahlo made several visits to New York, where many of their works remain on display today.

Because many of the murals are themselves painted into the sides of buildings all throughout Mexico City and cannot physically be removed, much of what will be on display in Philadelphia will be paintings and prints as well as broadsheets of many of the murals.

It is a case study in how social change is as much about its ideals as it is its own representation.

For more information, visit Philamuseum.org.