‘Arte Diseño Xicágo’ a fascinating look at Mexico’s influence on Chicago art

Jesús Torres worked the fields in Mexico’s Bajío region before leaving with his wife in 1924 to settle two years later in Chicago. He stumbled onto ceramics while taking another class at Jane Addams’ Hull-House, and went on to enjoy an artistic career that included designing decorative relief panels for Pullman railroad coaches.

Never heard of him? Torres is one of the many little-known or unknown names among the nearly three dozen artists featured in “Arte Diseño Xicágo (Art Design Chicago): Mexican Inspiration from the World’s Columbian Exposition to the Civil Rights Era.”

The ambitious, groundbreaking exhibition, which runs through Aug. 19 at the National Museum of Mexican Art, reveals a fascinating side of Chicago art history that has remained largely and unfairly overlooked.

The show is one of the highlights of Art Design Chicago. Spearheaded by the Terra Foundation for American Art, the yearlong series of exhibitions and other programs showcases Chicago’s leading role in the world of art and design from the 1871 Chicago fire to the turn of the 21st century.

The thesis of “Arte Diseño Xicágo” is simple yet revelatory: Since the 19th century, visitors and immigrants from Mexico have influenced the Chicago art scene in many significant yet often under-recognized ways, and artists from Chicago have had an impact on Mexican culture as well.

A good example of the latter is Mariana Yampolsky, a native Chicagoan who became the first female member of Mexico City’s Taller de Grafíca Popular (Popular Graphic Art Workshop) at age 19 and remained with the influential printmaking cooperative for 15 years. Several of her pensive linocuts are on view, including an undated portrait titled “Laundress.”

The exhibition, organized by Cesáreo Moreno, the museum’s chief curator and visual director, opens with José María Jara’s “The Wake,” which was shown at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. It runs through the 1970s with paintings, sculptures and original prints interspersed with historical photographs and other archival materials — 140 objects in all.

There are all kinds of unexpected connections. Take Archibald J. Motley Jr., for example. The Chicago-based African-American artist, who was featured a few years ago in a nationally touring retrospective, traveled to the Mexico in the 1950s.

He is represented by a compelling horizontal painting on a petate, a mat woven from strips of palm leaves. Titled “Another Mexican Baby” (1953-54), it depicts a funeral procession, with mostly blue-hued colors and Motley’s deliberately loose treatment of scale and perspective.

Elsewhere is a 1955 oil on canvas by Diego Rivera, one of the most famous of the Mexican modernists. He created a portrait (perhaps on commission?) of Alfred MacArthur, a prominent Oak Park resident who owned a home in Cuernavaca. Although it could not be called a major example, the colorful painting nonetheless offers a taste of Rivera’s style with its relaxed, straightforward realism. Interestingly, the artist pays nearly as much attention to the depiction of a nearby (red ginger?) plant as he does the sitter.

But the emphasis in this show is not on notable artists like Motley or Rivera, but on less-heralded figures like Enrique Alférez. Forcibly conscripted into Pancho Villa’s notorious army in the early 20th century, he later escaped and made his way to Illinois, studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1924-27. Alferéz went on to be known for free-standing sculpture and architectural reliefs like those he created for the fifth story of the 333 N. Michigan building. Several of his works are featured here, including “Moses” (circa 1950), a dramatic, angular wood sculpture that shows the influence of the streamlined art-deco movement on his aesthetic.

Another intriguing artist is Luis M. Ortiz, who immigrated to Chicago with his family when he was 7 and later performed with the Cole Brothers and Ringling Bros. circuses before fighting in World War II. After returning home, he eventually became a full-time student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he developed a textured, flowing style of abstraction. In addition to several selections of his work is a playful, cartoon-like portrait of Ortiz by famed offbeat artist H.C. Westermann, who spent part of his career in Chicago. It is yet another significant example of the crossover of styles and influences in this show.

Other highlights include “Astronaut Targets” (1965) by Errol Ortiz, who became a noted member of the Chicago Imagists after spending six months in Mexico in 1963; Carlos Cortéz’s socio-politically charged look at police brutality, “We Serve and Protect” (1963) and Carlos Mérida’s semi-abstract, Mayan-influenced “Popol Vuh Prints,” Nos. 1-10 (1943).

While “Arte Diseño Xicágo” is hardly the definitive take on this facet of Chicago art history, it is an important first step, with an accompanying catalog in the works. Let’s hope the National Museum and other institutions pursue some of the myriad follow-up exhibitions this introduction suggests.

Kyle MacMillan is a local freelance writer.