A new US exhibition celebrates a 19th-century Mexican artist whose landscapes fostered a nascent sense of Mexican national identity.
Opening at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, José María Velasco features 24 of the eponymous master’s paintings, which — like his American contemporaries in the Hudson River School — largely consist of sweeping landscapes of natural splendor. But where Hudson River painters “idealized the grandeur and promise of a new country with a Manifest Destiny,” Velasco’s works emphasized Mexico’s “ancient roots in pre-Hispanic civilizations,” The Wall Street Journal wrote.
Velasco looked ahead, too: One masterpiece blends three eras of Mexican history, with a Spanish colonial basilica; an eagle, representing Aztec myth; and, in the distance, roads and railroads signifying the future sprawl of Mexico City.