Archive for September, 2021

Artist Spotlight: Emilio Amero

Modern Mexican art is dominated by artists with colossal reputations—Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Frida Kahlo, and many others. In my experience though, it is sometimes the artists who have garnered less attention that produced the most gripping works, charting unique artistic trajectories. One such figure, whose work I adore and have long wanted to write about, is Emilio Amero (1901–1976). Among the most versatile artists of his generation, Amero painted in fresco and on canvas, but was also a graphic designer, caricaturist, photographer, filmmaker, printmaker, gallery owner, and professor.

Born in Ixtlauaca, in the State of Mexico, Amero moved to the capital as a boy, eventually studying at the National School of Fine Arts. Although he was initially drawn to fresco painting and assisted on several important mural projects, Amero left Mexico in 1925 and settled in New York, where he worked as an illustrator for various publications, including the New Yorker and Life, and designed advertising campaigns for Saks Fifth Avenue. In New York, he explored new mediums, producing a short experimental film, 777, and trying his hand at photography. In his early photographs, he played with double exposures and other techniques for manipulating photographic negatives, but he eventually began working in a more documentary style.

Although Amero’s love for film and photography would continue when he returned to Mexico in 1930, he began working in the medium for which he appears to have had the greatest creative passion—printmaking. While teaching lithography at the National School of Fine Arts, Amero also opened a gallery, Galería Posada, where he exhibited the work of young artists, gave lectures, and held film screenings. In the mid-1930s, he returned to the United States, moving between the two countries for many years while completing various projects and teaching in New York, Mexico City, and Seattle. In 1946 Amero accepted a position at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, where he taught graphic arts until his retirement in 1967.

Emilio Amero, There is Fear, 1947, lithograph, Dallas Museum of Art, Neiman-Marcus Prize, First Southwestern Print Exhibition, 1948, 1948.12
Emilio Amero, Where?, 1948, lithograph, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum Zonne Memorial Prize, 2nd Southwestern Exhibition of Prints and Drawings, 1949, 1949.5

The DMA is fortunate to have four lithographs from Amero’s time in Norman, all of which speak to larger themes in the artist’s work. There is Fear and Where? show the artist’s propensity for contorting and compressing figures, their rigid bodies giving the impression of flesh that has turned to stone. This disquiet is enhanced by the dreamlike landscape in which the figures exist, filled with oddly shaped objects whose purpose seems unclear. In contrast, Dressing and Fiesta show more relatable scenes, their figures alive with movement, recalling some of Amero’s photographs of everyday life in rural Mexico.

Emilio Amero, Dressing, 1949, lithograph, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum Zonne Memorial Prize, 2nd Southwestern Exhibition of Prints and Drawings, 1949, 1949.4
Emilio Amero, Fiesta, 1950, color lithograph, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Association Purchase, 1954.27

Three of these prints entered the collection after winning prizes at DMA exhibitions celebrating printmaking in the Southwest during the mid-20th century. Together they are a testament to Amero’s impact on the arts of this region.

Dr. Mark A. Castro is The Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin American Art at the DMA.

Expressing Hope, Dreams, and Gratitude with Ex-votos

Ex-votos are works of art that express gratitude for miraculous events or answered prayers. To go along with the works displayed in the Devoted exhibition, we asked visitors to create their own ex-votos that express something they are thankful for or that is meaningful to them. Check out this round-up of community artwork submissions! Click each artwork to expand the image.

Themes of family:

Themes of nature and animals:

Themes of health:

Themes of art:

And everything in between:

Connections Across Collections: “Slip Zone”

Opening September 14, Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia highlights the innovations in painting, sculpture, and performance that shaped artistic production in the Americas and East Asia during the mid-20th century. Find out about the transnational connections between pairs of artworks featured in the show from the exhibition’s curators.

Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art

While the narrative of US art history has focused on the singular achievements of Abstract Expressionism, it did not emerge on the world scene ex nihilo. Rather, US artists drew from multiple precedents, including the Mexican mural movement, which has special resonance for us at the DMA given our longstanding strengths in art from the region. In Slip Zone, Jackson Pollock’s Figure Kneeling Before Arch with Skulls is paired with Crepúsculo by David Alfaro Siqueiros. Siqueiros taught Pollock to use industrial paints at the Experimental Workshop in New York in 1936, which would later inform his use of nontraditional art media in his classic era drip paintings. The expressionistic pathos of this earlier Pollock painting also mirrors the influence of José Clemente Orozco, whose murals he had seen at Dartmouth College the same year.

Images: Jackson Pollock, Figure Kneeling Before Arch with Skulls, about 1934–38, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2017.7, © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; David Alfaro Siqueiros, Crepúsculo, 1965, pyroxylin and acrylic on panel, private collection, © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SOMAAP, Mexico City

Dr. Vivian Li, The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art

Using a hair dryer and polyvinyl acetate adhesive—commercially available since 1947 as Elmer’s Glue-All—Takesada Matsutani discovered that he could create corporeal, bulbous forms by blowing air into the material from behind until each “bubble” burst. Affixing them to the surface of his paintings, Matsutani constructed uncanny compositions. Similar to Matsutani and other members of the pioneering Gutai collective in Osaka, Robert Rauschenberg sought to blur the distinction between art and life through the use of everyday materials. For his Hoarfrost series, he transferred newspaper images to pieces of diaphanous fabric. After meeting the Gutai collective in 1964, Rauschenberg later collaborated with them, including onstage.

Images: Takesada Matsutani, Work-63-A.L. (The night), 1963, polyvinyl acetate adhesive, oil, and acrylic on canvas, The Rachofsky Collection and the Dallas Museum of Art through the TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2012.1.5. Courtesy the artist. © Takesada Matsutani; Robert Rauschenberg, Night Hutch (Hoarfrost), 1976, ink on unstretched fabric, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the artist, 1977.21, © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

Vivian Crockett, Former Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art

Around 1968 Lynda Benglis began pigmenting large vats of rubber latex with day-glo paint and pouring the dyed materials directly onto the floor. Created after Benglis visited a 1969 Helen Frankenthaler retrospective, this work is a nod to Frankenthaler’s method of pouring paint onto unprimed canvas. A founding member of the Gutai Art Association, Shozo Shimamoto was also deeply invested in experiments with materiality and technique. The artist often incorporated elements of performance in the creation of his paintings, such as throwing glass bottles of paint at the canvas. To produce Untitled – Whirlpool, Shimamoto poured layers of paint onto the canvas, removing the paintbrush as a mediating tool and leaving the final composition to chance and the physical, viscous qualities of the material itself.

Images: Lynda Benglis, Odalisque (Hey, Hey Frankenthaler), 1969, poured pigmented latex, Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2003.2, © 2021 Lynda Benglis / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY; Shozo Shimamoto, Untitled – Whirlpool, 1965, oil on canvas, The Rachofsky Collection and the Dallas Museum of Art through the TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2012.1.3, © Shozo Shimamoto Association. Naples

Behind the Scenes: Bosco Sodi

Opening September 14, 2021, Bosco Sodi: La fuerza del destino will feature approximately 30 outdoor sculptures by the artist in the DMA’s Sculpture Garden. Created from clay sourced at Sodi’s studio in Oaxaca, dried in the sun, and fired in a traditional brick kiln, the resulting surfaces bear the beautiful scars of their process. Take a behind-the-scenes look at the artist creating his work.

Preparing the clay to sculpt:

Creating the clay spheres:

Drying the clay spheres:

Courtesy: Studio Bosco Sodi, Photographer Sergio Lopez.


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