Print posters by the most famous Mexican artists of the early twentieth century, including Diego Rivera, will be shown in one of the world's most famous museums, the British Museum, an art foundation announced Friday.
The Aldama Foundation, a charitable foundation set up by two philanthropists, facilitated the provision of 16 posters, produced between 1936 and 1953 and costing 25,000 pounds (40,750 U.S. dollars), for the British Museum's exhibition, the art fund said.
The 16 posters, including Diego Rivera's Emiliano Zapata and His Horse, are part of the "Revolution on paper: Mexican prints 1910-1960" exhibition, which displays about 130 print posters by more than 40 Mexican artists.
The British Museum said on its website that the exhibition was the first in Europe to focus on the great age of Mexican printmaking in the the first half of the twentieth century.
The Zapata print is one of the 100 copies ordered in 1932 by a New York gallery. "It was bought from the granddaughter of the publisher. It has never been sold or framed and is close to its original condition," Aldama's statement said.
Zapata was a key leader in Mexico's 1910 revolution and remains a hero to many Mexicans to this day.
Other major artists in the exhibition include Isidoro Ocampo, Alfredo Zalce and Leopoldo Mendez.
"The British Museum is delighted to be able to add to its collection the most famous print ever made in Mexico, which can now be put alongside the masterpieces of other schools in the British national collection," said Antony Griffiths, who is Keeper of the British Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings.
The exhibition will begin on Oct. 22 and run until April 5 next year.
(Xinhua News Agency August 29, 2009)
