During two extended trips to Mexico made between 1923 and 1926, American photographer Edward Weston (1886‱958) created some of his earliest Modernist photographs, which form the core of the exhibition “Viva Mexico! Edward Weston and His Contemporaries” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). Serving as a complement to “Viva Mexico!” is the exhibition “Vida y Drama: Modern Mexican Prints.”
It celebrates the bold and socially conscious prints made by Mexican artists during the 1920s through the 1950s. Both exhibitions are on view at MFA from May 30 to November 2.
Featured in the Weston exhibition are approximately 45 works, among them about 30 rare photographs by Weston and selected images by Tina Modotti, Brett Weston, Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Paul Strand. These photographs from the 1920s and 1930s are drawn from the museum’s own collection, as well as the Lane Collection, which is on long-term loan to the MFA. Additionally, a compelling 1939 portrait of Frida Kahlo by Hungarian-born photographer Nickolas Muray has been lent from a local private collection.
In an early biography of Edward Weston, writer and editor Nancy Newhall described Mexico as his “Paris,” the place where he greatly expanded his range as an artist. His total of more than two years in Mexico †Weston’s only travel outside the United States †offered him the opportunity to move away from his Pictorialist style, with its soft focus and ethereal, romantic qualities, toward more abstract forms and sharper resolution of detail.
Heroic portrait heads, avant-garde nudes, urban views, cloud studies and landscapes and images of Mexican toys and folk art are among the subjects he captured with his large-format camera. This period of experimentation with isolated objects also resulted in some of Weston’s earliest forays into still life, as can be seen in “Chayotes,” 1924, a closeup of the beautiful, spiny squash arranged in a painted wooden bowl.
Many of the earliest images that Weston produced in Mexico were portraits and nudes, both subjects that he had specialized in previously but now took on a very different look and feel. Soon after his arrival, he began a series of monumental portraits of friends and acquaintances, all of them shot very closeup and from slightly below eye level, their heads filling the picture frame and their features heroicized. These include “Galván Shooting,” 1924, “Tina Modotti,” 1924, “Victoria Marin,” 1926, and “Rose Roland Covarrubias,” 1926.
He also made a stunning group of nudes of Modotti posing on their sun-baked rooftop patio, all three of which he titled “Tina on the Azotea,” 1924, as well as an incredibly simple and sculptural image, “Nude,” 1926, of fellow American expatriate Anita Brenner.
Abstract architectural details began to make their way into Weston’s work as well and he was drawn to capture light and shadow on a variety of surfaces, from the zigzag stone patterns of the ancient “Ruinas de Mitla,” 1926, to the angled forms of the convent stairwell and skylight in “San Pedro y San Pablo,” 1924.
“Viva Mexico!” also showcases Weston’s experimentation with landscape photography, both urban and rural. The striking view from his studio roof is recorded in “Desde la Azotea,” 1924, in which the geometry of the buildings below is heightened by the elevated vantage point and steeply raking light, and in “Michoacán,” 1926, where he captures the beautifully undulating silhouette of the pastoral countryside.
Printmaking has flourished in Mexico for nearly five centuries, since the first printing press arrived in 1539. After the Revolution of 1910, creative printmaking workshops thrived in Mexico City and prints played an important role in the formation of modern Mexican visual style.
“Vida y Drama: Modern Mexican Prints” features bold, evocative and socially conscious Mexican prints created from the 1920s through the 1950s. Lithographs, linocuts and woodcuts by some of Mexico’s finest artists †Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Leopoldo Méndez and Alberto Beltrán †are among the 27 objects in the exhibition drawn from the museum’s collection of works on paper.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is at 465 Huntington Avenue. For information, www.mfa.org or 617-367-9300.
