Arte Diseño Xicágo (Art Design Chicago) examined the early artistic involvement and influence of Mexican immigrants and artists in Chicago. The exhibition includes artwork, photographs and objects that concentrate on the years between the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893) and the Civil Rights Era of the 1970s. Unlike the vast regions of Texas, the Southwest and California that were part of Mexico before the U.S.–Mexico War (1846-48), Chicago received its first influx of Mexican travelers and migrants in the decades after the Great Fire (1871) when the railroads connected the industrial Midwest with Mexican border towns. Attracted by the success of collective bargaining and labor organizing at the turn of the 20th century, Mexico’s artistic community visited the manufacturing city while many craftspeople immigrated and settled into working-class neighborhoods. Arte Diseño Xicágo is part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art exploring Chicago’s art and design legacy, with presenting partner The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.

Participating Artists

Enrique Alférez (1901-1999), María Enríquez de Allen (1907-1999), Genaro Álvarez (1915-1996), William Arsenault (b.1940), Margaret Burroughs (1917-2010), Mario Castillo (b.1945), Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), Carlos Cortéz (1923-2005), Camilo Fuentes, Sadie Ellis Garland (1900-1996), José Gamaliel González (b.1933), José María Jara (1866-1939), Miguel Juárez, Adrian Lozano (1921-2004), Leopoldo Méndez (1902-1969), Herman Menzel (1904-1988), Carlos Mérida (1891-1984), Archibald J. Motley, Jr. (1891-1981), Robert Natkin (1919-1996), David Nyvall (1863-1946), Gregory Orloff (1890-1981), Errol Ortiz (b.1941), Luis M. Ortiz (1918-1997), Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Marcos Raya (b.1948), Bernard G. Silberstein (1905-1999), Mel Silverman (1931-1966), Morris Topchevsky (1899-1947), Jesús Torres (1898-1948), Maria Varela (b.1940), Salvador Vega (b.1957), José María Velasco (1840-1912), H.C. Westerman (1922-1981), Mariana Yampolsky (1925-2002), and Alfredo Zalce (1908-2003)

Curator

Cesáreo Moreno

Organizing Institution

National Museum of Mexican Art

Displayed at

National Museum of Mexican Art Main Gallery