The editorial categories are research topics that have guided researchers during the recovery phase and continue to be the impetus behind the Documents Project’s digital archive and the Critical Documents book series. Developed by the project’s Editorial Board, each of the teams analyzed this framework and adapted it to their local contexts in developing their research objectives and work plans during the Recovery Phase. Learn more on the Editorial Framework page.
The Art Salon of the SEP [Ministry of Public Education] (1931-1934), as coordinated by the painters Francisco Díaz de León and Gabriel Fernández Ledesma—who represented both the Departamento de Bellas Artes de la Secretaría de Educación Pública [Fine Arts Department of the SEP] and the Biblioteca Nacional [National Library]—sponsored this exhibition that featured the work of the European movement Der Blaue Reiter [The Blue Rider]. The exhibit was on loan from a gallery in California, in the United States. According to Diego Rivera, bringing this exhibition to Mexico was like “taking the noose into the hanged man’s house.” In other words, it was tantamount to taunting the academics and the more conservative social realists with an exhibition of works by the European avant-garde, even though the work was similar to Mexican instinctive, spontaneous art. The organizers were also keenly aware of the general public’s limited ability to understand art that, due to its language, “might . . . not mean much to most, [but] will convert quite a few.”
The earliest avant-garde exhibition spaces were promoted by the artists themselves. In the absence of any support from the private sector, however, those spaces tended to be provided by governmental cultural institutions. Faced with a shortage of gallery space, the painters Francisco Díaz de León and Gabriel Fernández Ledesma (1900-83) resorted to using the library as a more impressive venue for the international exhibition. The avant-garde exhibitions at the Sala de Arte generally included the work of muralists, engravers, and artisans of native extraction. They also featured the work of children from schools that encouraged artistic experimentation and spontaneous expression.