
“Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945”
FLOWER POWER! The fragrant phrase hit me like a ton of calla lilies as I wandered into “Vida Americana,” Barbara Haskell’s fascinating show about how the Mexican muralists—especially José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, known as Los Tres Grandes—influenced US artists as varied as Belle Baranceanu, Elizabeth Catlett, William Gropper, Philip Guston, Jackson Pollock, and Charles White.* In the first room, between Rivera’s Flower Festival: Feast of Santa Anita, 1931, and Alfredo Ramos Martínez’s Calla Lily Vendor, 1929, a veritable welcome mat had been laid out.
Of course,