Includes 66 color images.
This book-written from Zheng Shengtian's unique position of an artist, curator and scholar who participated in the history he recounts-vividly chronicles all the key artistic exchanges between Mexico and China during the twentieth century and, in the process, convincingly reveals the profound and lasting influence that Mexican murals and visual art exerted on contemporary Chinese art.
Through archive materials, participant observations, and interviews collected over several decades, the book illuminates a broad range of influences, from Lu Xun introducing Diego Rivera's mural paintings to China in the 1930s to the deep impact that Mexican-American cartoonist Miguel Covarrubias had on the stylistic development of China's most famous mid-twentieth century cartoonists, the dramatic talks of David Siqueiros in Beijing during the Hundred Flowers Movement, and a fascinating account of his years spent in China by the "Latin American cultural ambassador" Chilean mural artist José Venturelli (1925-1988). These transcultural connections have led to further collaborations and mutual influences among Chinese and Mexican artists down to the present-exemplified by Zheng Shengtian's own Winds from Fusang group mural and exhibitions-and represent a key part of the global modernist movement beyond North America and Europe and address an overlooked aspect of global art history.
This study blends historical reflections with lived experience while bridging the two fields of Chinese and international art scholarship. The book fills a significant research gap in our understanding of contemporary Chinese art, offering new perspectives on important issues, such as the origins of contemporary Chinese art, the variety of impacts that have shaped the development of Chinese art over the past century besides Soviet/Russian socialist realism, and the decentralized modernity embodied by global leftwing artistic interactions.
The book also includes a rich collection of color images and historical photos as well as a substantial section of translated primary documents, such as interviews with key participants from both China and Latin America.
Sino-Mexican Art and Cultural Exchanges in the Twentieth Century is a must read for all those who study modern Chinese and Mexican art, cultural exchanges in modern China, and the interaction of leftist art and global modernism. It provides valuable materials for teaching global art history written in an accessible language, and its biographical approach and vivid primary materials will appeal to students from undergraduate levels upwards.
