In conversation: Marisol Argüelles and Estrella de Diego

Marisol Argüelles, curator and Director of the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico, and Estrella de Diego, Professor of Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid, will discuss the exhibition Modern Mexico in the Gelman Santander Collection through some of the tensions that defined 20th-century Mexican art: tradition and modernity, national identity and international influences, collective narratives and individual experience.
 

Through the 96 works that make up the Gelman Santander Collection, the exhibition offers a multifaceted view of Mexican art, with particular attention to figures such as Frida Kahlo and María Izquierdo, whose presence invites us to reconsider an art history traditionally shaped around male protagonists.
 

The conversation also proposes viewing the collection not as a closed group of works, but as a network of intertwined stories: that of a country seeking new ways to represent itself; that of artists constantly negotiating between the local and the global; and that of Jacques and Natasha Gelman, whose work as collectors became deeply connected to the cultural life of the Mexico that welcomed them.
 

An opportunity to reflect on the construction of identities and the fundamental role images play in this process.