By Cailin Acosta
SAN DIEGO – An afternoon of art at the San Diego Museum of Art in historic Balboa Park did not disappoint. A few of the exhibits will be closing soon to make way for new ones, and with middle school starting next week, we had an opportunity to attend and see two of the exhibits that will be closing on Sunday, August 10.
Upstairs in the collection galleries, “For the People: Modern Printmaking in Mexico” portrayed the development of visual arts in Mexico, featuring satirical lithographs from around the 1900s that inspired the Muralist movement. This movement included posadas (depicting the biblical journey of Mary and Joseph) and calaveras (skulls honoring the Day of the Dead, Día de los Muertos), as well as the Virgin of Guadalupe and other Christian and national images made popular in prints.
Pablo Esteban O’Higgins’ Brick Workers (1946, lithograph) depicts an adult and a child building a structure. O’Higgins was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and was raised in San Diego, before moving in 1924 to Mexico City, where he became an assistant to the muralist Diego Rivera.
O’Higgins joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1927 and won a Soviet scholarship to study in Moscow before returning to Mexico.
The “Impressionism Across the Atlantic” exhibit features 40 Impressionist works from Europe and the United States. This movement did not take on as quickly as the other styles but later caught on with the bold and bright colors that seemingly became well appreciated through the works of Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. This opened the door to artists by using a plein-air approach.
Diego Rivera’s Village Near the Field (1919, oil on canvas) was inspired by the work of Paul Cezanne. Rivera created a series of Impressionist landscapes from about 1917 to 1919, before returning to Mexico in 1921, where he helped launch the Muralist movement.
Camille Pissarro’s Spring Morning in Pontoise (1874, oil on canvas) is also exhibited. He attended boarding school in France and studied with Gustave Courbet. Pissarro was a pivotal figure of the Impressionist group. Pissarro grew up in a small Jewish community in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and many of his children became artists.
Alfred Richard Mitchell displayed an iconic painting, oil on canvas, circa 1950, of La Jolla Cove. Showing the familiar stairs to the “Children’s Pool” before the seals moved in.
Click here for more information on the closing exhibits and what exhibits to look forward to.
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Cailin Acosta is the assistant editor of the San Diego Jewish World.