... a real point of reference for enthusiasts, collectors, admirers and curious.
Buena Suerte - Milagros de México
From March 20, 2018
The P.G.R. Foundation with the exhibition "Buena Suerte, Milagros de México", he recounts, with about 300 retablos (ex ~ vote) contemporaries coming from a private collection, embellished with ancient and modern objects of popular devotion, all the folklore and the passion of Mexico.
It is a colorful network that traps many different traditions and legends between its meshes.
There are those for example related to the turbulent history of European colonialism or the deeds of the famous Francisco Pancho Villa and its Dorados. What emerges from these testimonies is the close and difficult relationship with the United States, which speaks very often of emigration and exploitation, but most of all the retablos recount the profound devotion and vivid expression of popular faith.
The small votive plates on the walls, like pieces of a big puzzle, narrate a colorful and often ironic daily life and they are contaminated with ancient folk legends, such as Chupacabra, Llorona, Calaveras, Día de los muertos, and Catrina, skeletal figure of a European bourgeois woman, invented by the lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada and taken by the famous painter Diego Rivera in the mural "Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central" *.
It is therefore a matter of contemporary testimonies of everyday life, with its many difficulties, which sometimes are enriched with fanciful apparitions of aliens or unusual figures that have the pindaric flavor of pure narrative.
New cults, often clandestine like that of Santa Muerte, are told with strength and devotion to witness the many difficulties of a place to forget the past, to live the present and to have a reassuring perspective of their future.
Among the endless and daring misadventures of everyday life, the life and humanity of Mexico, as of Latin America, are lightened by the funny serenades played by the famous and popular mariachi and the cheerful festivals that take the name of posadas.
An exhibition to be watched and appreciated, with attention, but also with a smile.
* Museo Mural Diego Rivera, Calle Balderas, Mexico City.