Orozco press release

Press Release

Media inquiries:
Sharon Reed, Public Relations Coordinator
Hood Museum of Art, (603) 646-2426 • sharon.reed@dartmouth.edu

International museum collaboration produces comprehensive survey of works by leading twentieth-century Mexican artist

Hanover, NH--The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in collaboration with the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, announces a new exhibition, José Clemente Orozco in the United States, 1927-1934. The exhibition explores the extensive body of work produced by José Clemente Orozco, one of the leading Mexican artists of the twentieth century, during an extended stay in the United States. Scheduled for presentation at the San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire, and the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, during 2002-2003, this show features more than 120 paintings, prints, drawings, watercolors, and preparatory studies for murals, all showcasing Orozco's revolutionary artistic vision. It is the most ambitious exhibition devoted to Orozco in nearly two decades and the first major museum show to be presented in the United States on Orozco's works in more than forty years.

Beginning in 1927 Orozco spent seven years in the United States. These years coincided with unprecedented cultural exchange between Mexico and the United States. During this time, in addition to his important murals at Pomona College, Claremont, California; the New School for Social Research, New York; and Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, Orozco also created a substantial body of work in other media. Viewed as a whole, his work from this period sheds light on the artist's complex creative and political development and provides an illuminating case study on the influence of Mexican visual artists in the United States.

Orozco's contemporaries Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros also visited the United States in these years, but their stays were brief. Traveling north from Mexico to seek new patrons for their mural commissions, these three artists all confronted an unfamiliar culture and a modernity that at once attracted and repelled them. Orozco's works, including his mural commissions in the United States, were deeply affected by these experiences. His murals brought him the international recognition that he desired and when he returned to Mexico in 1934 he did so with a strong reputation and new mural commissions in his homeland.

The development of this exhibition has brought together Mexican, British, and American scholars who have made a special study of twentieth-century Mexican art and of the artistic and cultural relations between the two nations. The result is a comprehensive survey of José Clemente Orozco's work of this period, never before assembled in a single exhibition. José Clemente Orozco in the United States, 1927-1934, explores the transformations in Orozco's subjects, style, and working methods, and the charged cultural climate in which he created such a diverse body of work. The exhibition also chronicles his experiences as a cultural émigré and his attempts to negotiate the complex network of art patronage in the United States. It is curated by Renato González Mello, professor and researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and former curator at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, and Diane Miliotes, research curator at the Hood Museum of Art.

José Clemente Orozco in the United States is scheduled to open at the San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego (March 9 to May 19, 2002). It will travel to the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire (June 8 to December 15, 2002) and the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (January 25 to April 13, 2003). The exhibition itinerary allows visitors to view the exhibition in conjunction with nearby Orozco murals in southern California, New Hampshire, and Mexico City.

A scholarly, fully illustrated catalogue available in both English and Spanish accompanies the exhibition. It features essays by a multinational group of art historians including Dawn Ades, Alicia Azuela, Jacquelynn Baas, Karen Cordero, Rita Eder, Renato González Mello, Diane Miliotes, James Oles, Francisco Reyes Palma, and Victor Sorell.

This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and the Rockefeller Foundation.