Spring lights up Mexico City as Claude Monet’s water lilies arrive at the Museo Nacional de Arte for an exhibition that strikes a dialogue between this French impressionist and the Mexican painters who drew on nature also cast their light.
The exhibition “Monet. Lights of Impressionism” includes three paintings by Monet, two from the Dallas Museum of Art and one from the Soumya Museum. The Dallas paintings “Valle Buona, near Bordighera” and “Water Lilies” had not previously gone to Mexican museums. The version of Monet’s famous Lilies or Water Lilies included in the exhibition is the one that inaugurated the most famous series by the painter.
“Monet said he worked on reflection and painting, he said he was not a poet, I think he is,” said Ana Leticia Carpizo, deputy technical director of the National Museum of Art.
“It portrays nature, which is timeless, an expression of nature greater than any discourse of human beings that can be made political or historical. He is portraying a vastness of light, color, and fill, and for this reason, He spends hours painting nature,” he said.
The painting “The Green Cloud” included in the exhibition bears a striking resemblance to the tone of the Mexican painter Joaquín Clausel. Clausel, originally from the state of Campeche in the Mexican southeast, studied law and was a self-taught painter.
“He’s a naturally rebellious guy,” Carpizzo said of Clausel. “He travels to France, meets Monet, learns about the movement, sees various impressionist exhibitions and contacts with the Barbizon school and brings this current to Mexico and works of color, light, and landscape.” develops amazingly.
Nor could the great Mexican landscaper José María Velasco be absent, who specialized in the wide skies, panoramic hills, and diversity of Mexican flora. Velasco pursued his career during the Porfiriato and studied at the Academy of San Carlos. He was a realist for whom light was also the hero of his works.
Velasco “is a link to Mexico and France from that moment on, because he was the great exhibitor at the Universal Exposition in France,” recalled Carpizzo.
Mateo Herrera, Carlos Rivera, and Francisco Romano Guillemin are other Mexican painters included in the exhibition, which opened on Wednesday night and will be open to the public until August 27.
“Monet. The Light of Impressionism” is a window into the development of Monet’s style (Paris, 1840 – Giverny, 1926). He begins with paintings more inclined toward Realism, which he develops with rapid and juicy brushstrokes. Done, unmixed colors to end in your famous Water Lily.
“Monet is a contemporary artist because he is a successful artist, avant-garde… His main concern is to depict the power of nature against man,” he said. “He is a very present artist who puts the great question of our presence in nature and the world within our reach.”
Faced with the devastation caused by climate change, it remains to be imagined what these earths layers would think of the current state of the planet.
