For Immediate Release: January 19, 2007
Contact: Erin Ragulsky, 719-295-7211
erin@sdc-arts.org

Sangre de Cristo Arts Center features the Art and Culture of Mexico
"¡Ay, México!"
The Spring 2007 exhibitions at the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center celebrate the invaluable gifts this region has received from the Mexican culture. Art and culture in Mexico are regarded as essential to existance. The principles of Mexican dance, culinary arts, music and visual arts will permeate every square foot of the Helen T. White Galleries and Buell Children’s Museum over the next few months with an exhibition called "¡Ay, México!".
White Gallery & King Gallery • Feb. 23 through May 12

 "The Legend of Chromes"
Works from the collection of Museo Soumaya de México
Mexican Calendar Legends
Discover over 60 rare oil paintings, chromium prints and articles from the vast archives of Galas de México. The Legend of Chromes is a traveling exhibition of paintings featuring Mexican calendar legends organized by Museo Soumaya in Mexico City. The collection is a picture album of utopian scenes printed between 1930 and 1970 by the publishing house Galas de México depicting nationalism, The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema and popular culture. Artists include Jorge González Camarena, Josep Renau, Armando Dreschler and Jesús de al Helguera. The exhibition consists of two groups. The first group is a repertoire of illustrations once included in catalogs salespeople offered to the commercial industry in order to satisfy advertising needs. Their artistic themes included religious traditions, music and dance, love and women, humor, sports, great celebrations and Mexican cinema. The second group is a collection of testimonial graphics displaying the impact that the paintings have made in Mexico and abroad. Now a part of the Soumaya Museum collection, the works were discovered in the 1980s and have been exhibited throughout Mexico, the United States, France and Lebanon.
King Gallery • Feb. 23 through May 12

"¡Viva La Revolución!" Money of the Mexican Revolution
This exhibit is held in cooperation with the American Numismatic Association. Viva la Revolución is a large traveling exhibit from the association located in Colorado Springs, CO. This extensive coin collection serves as a history of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. "¡Viva La Revolución!" provides a new and interesting approach to the story of the revolution, highlighting a little-known aspect of this pivotal event in the history of modern Mexico. The decade of chaos that followed resulted in a story told through the coins and paper money issued during the rebellion. Always in need of money to pay troops, buy supplies and set up provisional governments, those orchestrating the battle for change quickly discovered a simple solution — they made their own.
Hoag Gallery • Feb. 3 through April 28

"Encuentro: A Leo Tanguma Community Sculptural Mural Project"
(Encounter)
Starting in February 2007, the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center’s Hoag Gallery will become the art studio of Denver muralist Leo Tanguma for six weeks as he paints a community sculptural mural celebrating Hispanic culture in the United States. Open to the public, visitors can watch the mural come to life and interact with Tanguma as he paints every Thursday, Friday and Saturday starting Feb. 3 through April 28, 2007. Once completed, this sculptural mural will travel through the community.
Tanguma’s murals consist of references to the Mexican-American civil rights movement and Mexican history, and his work tends to cross cultural boundaries. The mural he will be painting for the Arts Center is titled "Encuentro" (Encounter) in which Tanguma hopes to encourage Latinos to remember and celebrate their Mexican culture. It features the mythological character La Llorona, sometimes called the Woman in White or the Weeping Woman, who is the ghost of a woman crying for her dead children. The mural is 30 feet wide and 9 feet tall and is made of three separate pieces allowing it to be disassembled and reassembled in other places in the community, indoors or outdoors, to be showcased for years to come. Encuentro (Encounter) is underwritten in part by GCC Rio Grande.
Regional Gallery, 2nd Floor Foyer and 3rd Floor Foyer • Feb. 10 through May 5

"Tradición Mexico"
Discover three galleries of work by Mexican and American artists featuring Antonio Castro, Luis González Palma, Tatiana Percero, Rufino Tamayo, Francisco Zuniga and Sergio Garval who each have a style that is true to their heritage, yet unique from one another. It is the heritage of each artist that makes this show a beautiful compilation of paintings and photography.
Border painter, inhabitant of two cities (City Juárez, Chihuahua (Mexico), and El Paso, Texas (U.S.)), Antonio Castro uses painting as an account of the history of El Paso and City Juárez. The subjects philosophically reflect the human being as a citizen of the universe.

Being of mixed or "mestizo" background, Luis González Palma’s photography focuses on the plight of the indigenous Mayas and the mestizo people. Frequently political in nature, photographs often feature distant gazes and mystical costumes that objectify and explain the pain of his people.

Tatiana Parcero creates self portrait photography works layered with scientific, cartographic and pre-Colombian iconographic imagery resulting in metaphorical explorations of the female body’s role in the course of sexual politics as well as personal histories.

Rufino Tamayo is considered one of the leading Mexican artists of the 20th century. Tamayo first gained his reputation in the United States and Europe before he was acclaimed in his native land. Less interested than Rivera or Siqueiros in an art of social message, Tamayo concentrated more on the formal and decorative elements of painting. Strong influences from cubism and fauvism are apparent in Tamayo’s work, as well as elements from Mexican folklore.
Yucatan artist Julio Castillo, whose work Seated Woman is in the exhibit, partners with A Promise of Health to raise money to bring healthcare to the Yucatan Maya who are portrayed in his art.  A Promise of Health acts as the exclusive agent for the sale of his works in the U.S. For each work sold, Castillo donates 70 percent of the sale to Mayan healthcare. Castillo will also have a one-man show in the Arts Center's Boardroom Gallery. Eight of his paintings and pastels will be on display through May 5.

Born in Costa Rica, Francisco Zuniga moved to Mexico in 1936, where his work increasingly gained wide recognition throughout Latin America, Europe, the United States and Asia, making Zuniga Mexico’s most internationally collected artist. His works are included in major museum collections throughout the world.
Sergio Garval belongs to a new generation of Mexican artists. Born in 1968 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico his work has a baroque, theatrical feel, always experimenting with different materials and ways to find expression for his strong, vivid imagination. His latest work focuses on the grotesque of the human figure by giving it character and movement by over-emphasizing prospective.

Sculptural works will also be on display in the Tradición Mexico exhibit by artist Felipe Castaneada, courtesy of Nedra Matteucci Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.
Join us for a free public reception on Friday, Feb. 23, from 5 to 7 p.m. Exhibitions and reception are sponsored by St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center. Admission to the Arts Center is $4 for adults and $3 for children. Members of the Arts Center receive free admission. The Arts Center is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, please call 719-295-7200 or stop by the Arts Center located at 210 N. Santa Fe Ave., just off of I-25, exit 98b.