Mexican artists enrich, inspire Bay Area

The opening this week of a major San Francisco exhibit of the work of Frida Kahlo is a reminder that Mexican artists have found a home and inspiration in the Bay Area at least as far back as 1930, when Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera, spent a year working here.

At the same time, a crop of young Mexican artists is creating new work in the Bay Area, bringing a fresh lens to issues such as border walls and the fragility of urban landscapes. Many are forging a hybrid identity, moving back and forth between the United States and Mexico, and contributing to the cultures of both places.

“These are people living in a globalized world,” said René de Guzman, senior curator of art at the Oakland Museum of California, who mounted a show of Mexican art when he was curator of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in the 1990s. “It enriches the cultural conversation that’s happening here.”"*

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