The editorial categories are research topics that have guided researchers during the recovery phase and continue to be the impetus behind the Documents Project’s digital archive and the Critical Documents book series. Developed by the project’s Editorial Board, each of the teams analyzed this framework and adapted it to their local contexts in developing their research objectives and work plans during the Recovery Phase. Learn more on the Editorial Framework page.
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This article describes the activities in the French city of Bordeaux during “Mexican Week,” the event that was sponsored by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes [INBA, National Institute of Fine Arts] and organized to present exhibitions of Mexican books, movies, and the visual arts. In the writer’s opinion, the artistic portion of the exhibition represents Mexico most authentically via its presentation of the “Mexican School” as expressed in works such as La Anunciación [The Annunciation] by Raúl Anguiano. At present, in Guereña’s opinion, “that trend is still being used in mural frescoes (usually of a humanistic type) and paintings that depict natural subjects, trees, and apparel.”
The “pro-government” critic, Jacinto Luis Guereña, writes a favorable review of the material sent to France by the INBA. The selection assembled a variety of examples of Mexican painting that included artists of the Escuela Mexicana de Pintura [Mexican School of painting] as well as some of the painters from the so-called “Ruptura” group, such as Vicente Rojo and Alfonso Michel—but the reviewer considers only the former. Citing the “exaltation of the Latin American people” and the expression of the “roots of their soul and sensitivity,” Guereña responds to the article published in this same supplement two weeks earlier, which stated just the opposite and denounced the works sent by the INBA as being of a nationalist style that was represented by the very painting mentioned by Guereña: the one by Raúl Anguiano (1915-2006). Guereña wrote an almost identical article that same day in the supplement of El Nacional, the official journal of the federal government.