This book challenges the national myth that Mexican art between the Mexican Revolution and the Second World War was inevitably and thoroughly populist and nationalist and argues instead that there was no such all-encompassing spirit, and even art intended for broad populations was not always democratic.
The author explores the painstaking efforts of artists and arts administrators to stake their claims to public art and link that cultural production to some of the most extreme political goals and allegiances of the early 20th century. The chapters follow influential cultural producers, Vasconcelos, Dr. Atl, and the members of the Taller de GrĂĄfica Popular, whose involvement in thinking about the revolution and the role of art in it began with leadership roles in the early 1920s. In the subsequent decades, these leaders whose work might have seemed to share common values early on pursued sharply divergent paths as they considered global fascist, antifascist, and antisemitic movements. The polarized politics of the Second World War provide an opportunity to assess the extent of the divisions as these leaders divide themselves between Nazi collaborators and members of the resistance. The cultural producers examined in this study had a commonality of an often-agile navigation of nationalist trends in the service of work and philosophies that were flexible, wide ranging, and international. Merfish traces their work over the long period of the early 20th century examining their rise to prominence in the revolutionary period and across the Second World War era.
This book is ideal for researchers and students interested in Mexican Art History, Modern Print Culture, and Mexican History.