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MARCO: Masterpieces from Dr. Atl
29May
News

MARCO: Masterpieces from Dr. Atl

Curated by Andres Blaisten from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey, a 70-piece exhibit by one of Mexico’s greatest landscapists ever –Gerardo Murillo, a.k.a. Dr. Atl (1875-1964) opened Thursday. 

 

The exposition, organized by the Museo Colección Blaisten at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma, gives spectators the opportunity to witness Dr. Atl’s evolution as an artist and his contribution to Mexico’s modern art through a grand tour around his seven decades of artistic creation, including self-portraits, landscapes and bird’s-eye views.

 

Some portraits includes the ones he made using pastel on paper of painter Joaquin Clausell in 1908, and two others dated in 1921 and 1923 of Mexican poetess and painter Carmen Mondragon (Nahui Ollín), with whom he had a love affair. The self-portraits speak volumes of the last 20 years of the artist’s career.

 

On the other hand, the landscapes and bird’s-eye views –the latter ones were painted from airplanes- boast his signature inner movement and chromatic activity, the result of how the artists mastered curvilinear perspectives and the so-called “Atl color”.

 

Dr. Atl took his first painting lessons at age 19 in Guadalajara and studied Fine Arts in Mexico City. He taught at the San Carlos Academy such greats as Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco. In 1902 author Leopoldo Lugones gave him the nickname –it means water in Nahuatl tongue- that tagged him along for the rest of his life.

 

The exhibit’s catalog –it’ll remain open thru August- was put out by Editorial Turner (Spain) and it features texts penned by Olga Saenz, Jorge Alberto Manrique, Luis Rius Caso and Andrés Blaisten.

 

Source: Press release