JUAN
O’GORMAN
Juan
O'Gorman (1905-1982) was a Mexican painter, muralist and architect, considered
the first functionalist in Latin America. The integration that exists between
his multidisciplinary production makes him stand out as one of the most
outstanding and complete figures in the construction of the artistic identity
of Mexico in the last century. Among his most outstanding architectural works
are The First Functionalist House (1929), intended as a home for his parents;
the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo (1931-1932) house-studio; the Instituto Politécnico
Nacional (1932); between 1932 and 1934 he carried out more than thirty primary
and technical schools for the Secretaría de Educación Pública; he directed the
construction of the building and the mural of the Central Library of the UNAM
(1949-1951); his home-studio in the San Jerónimo area of Mexico City (1956);
the design and realization of Anahuacalli (1963), Diego Rivera's request to
preserve one of the largest pre-Columbian art collections in Mexico. As a
painter and muralist, numerous portraits of colleagues and figures from the
artistic scene of that period stand out, as well as Historia de la aviación
(1937) —which is in the AICM— and Allegory of communications (1953) —in the
headquarters of the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transporte.
Organized by Estudio Pedro Reyes
in collaboration with ICAN
ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB is an exhibition of posters that call for universal nuclear disarmament. Each made by a different artist, the group comprises historical and newly
commissioned works that detail a cultural history of disarmament movements and evidence the diversity of ways in which artists have expressed the need to ban the bomb. ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB is designed for maximum agility and economic effectiveness, relying on a black and white palette both for its impact and ease o reproduction. We asked artists to ensure their works can exist on a variety of supports, ephemera such as posters, postcards, billboards, banners, flags, t-shirts and social media posts, as we aspire to achieve the widest possible circulation of this message.
ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB presents the works of foundational conceptual artists Art & Language; pop hero, Keith Haring; legendary feminists, Guerrilla Girls; performance artists Regina José Galindo and Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, as well
as eminent sculptors Magdalena Abakanowicz and Isamu Noguchi. It also features indelible photographs by Robert Del Tredici and Ken Domon alongside protest graphics from social movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), founded in 1958 and still active; the epic Peace Squadron and Visual Artists Against Nuclear Arms (VAANA); and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Additionally, it examines how stories are told, from the theater of Bread and Puppet to films like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Marguerite Duras / Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour, to an unexpected survey of literature, from an early
anticipation of an atomic bomb, first envisioned by H.G. Wells in 1918, to the viscera spoken word poetry of Jayne Cortez.
ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB, organized by Estudio Pedro Reyes in collaboration with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), is presented on the occasion of the Second Meeting of State Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) held at the United Nations in 2023.
To organize en exhibition of ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB please contact curatorial assistant Verana Codina.
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