Saturday: Pasadena Museum of California Art Opens Three Exhibitions

Three new exhibitions will be opened at the Pasadena Museum of California Art on Sunday, January 19: “Picturing Mexico: Alfredo Ramos Martínez in California;” “Serigrafía” and “Flora Kao: Homestead.”

The exhibitions will be officially welcomed in an opening reception on Saturday, January 18, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

The museum is the first to have a comprehensive examination of the works of Mexican artist Alfredo Ramos Martínez whose pieces were produced in California between 1929 and 1946.

Emma Jacobson-Sive, director of public relations at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, said Martinez is an unsung artist.

Martinez was initially hailed as an innovator, but was quickly left on the fringes of the artistic trends that dominated Mexico City in the 1920s when his peers Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, also known as the “los tres grandes,” rose to prominence.

“He (Martinez) served as an unsung artist. His contemporary sort of overshadowed his work,” Jacobson-Sive said.

The museum will try to place Martinez “more firmly in part of the historical context” through the exhibition, she added.

Martínez’s paintings and murals were influenced by the European academic traditions he had absorbed while traveling abroad and by the social and populist art that was beginning to take root in Mexico. With the United States on the brink of a depression, much of his work from that period reveals both the economic and cultural climate of the country as well as his individual response to Mexico from Los Angeles.

“Picturing Mexico” exhibition, which has four sections: “L.A. Stories,” “Many Women,” “Religious Piety,” and “Forever Mexico,” will highlight the contributions of Martinez, placing him alongside his contemporaries in the narrative of early twentieth century art, the museum said in a statement.

“It’s unique specifically because it’s his work he did within California. He came from Mexico and it’s specifically the work he did during his time in Los Angeles,” Jacobson-Sive said. “So it’s sort of both looking at Los Angeles and also looking back at Mexico.”

Amy Galpin, curator of “Picturing Mexico,” will lead a walk-through of the exhibition on Sunday, January 19, at 3:00 p.m. Galpin will also discuss the artist’s distinctive style within the context of his American contemporaries and in relationship to historic events and artistic trends in Los Angeles during that time.

New notion of poster

The exhibition titled “Serigrafia,” curated by seven design experts, will challenge the the traditional notion of a “poster.” It will feature 30 influential silkscreens from the 1970s to the present. The works will explore subjects such as the United States embargo against Cuba and the Occupy Wall Street Movement, as well as other momentous cultural and political events and experience.

Beginning in the late 1960s, graphic art created at and distributed by artist-led collectives, or centros, contributed significantly to the public discourse. Emerging in concert with the civil rights movement and demanding political and social justice for marginalized groups, these prints confront political, economic, social, and cultural issues on both a personal and a global level.

Highlighting Mojave Desert

Artist Flora Kao will highlight the history of the deserted shacks that dot the Mojave Desert through her work titled “Homestead.”

By virtue of the Small Tract Act of 1938, homesteaders could claim five acres of expendable public land, prompting a mid-century land rush by Los Angelenos into the neighboring desert. The majority of these structures were eventually abandoned due to the harshness of desert living.

Kao explores through her exhibition the relationship of human to mapping and notions of home and placelessness by focusing on a prefabricated cabin standing on the verge of collapse in Wonder Valley. She also captures the homestead at a specific moment in its decay through life-size rubbings of each side of the dilapidated shack’s four walls.

“Homestead” will be suspended vertically in the museum’s project room. Kao and independent curator Howard Fox will discuss home, mapping, trace and ruin in relation to “Homestead” on Sunday, February 9, at 3:00 p.m.

The museum is open every Wednesday to Sunday from 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m. The exhibitions will be on display at the museum till Sunday, April 20.

Pasadena Museum of California Art is located at 490 East Union St. For more information, call (626) 568-3665 or visit http://www.pmcaonline.org.