Views from Mexico: A 20th-Century Panorama: New York

Ruiz-Healy Art presents Views from Mexico: A 20th-Century Panorama, a group exhibition showcasing works by Dr. Atl, Federico Cantú, Pedro Friedeberg, Mathias Goeritz, Julia Lopez, Feliciano Peña, and Francisco Toledo, among others. The exhibition will be on view at our New York City gallery from September 5 to October 31, 2025. Covering nearly a century, the exhibition provides a glimpse into the fluidity and evolution of global artistic movements and how they are interpreted in Mexico. Ranging from realism, abstraction, surrealism, and modernism, the featured artists cultivated and mastered these styles, influencing the cultural landscape of 20th-century Mexico.

Feliciano Peña was a painter and an engraver. Peña created striking semi-realistic landscapes that featured mountains and trees near Mexico City, where he spent most of his life. Peña's style is a faithful representation of nature, without distortion of form or light. His approach to landscapes is considered classical, using perspective techniques gained through careful observation.

"Feliciano Peña did not want to possess nature but rather to understand it in a dimension that would be apprehensible both physically and mentally." - Raquel Tibol

In his Hospital ABC series, Goeritz used collage and screenprinting techniques to explore themes of illness and the sterile hospital environment. A prolific sculptor and painter, Goeritz is known for his theory of “emotional architecture," which aims not just to create a space but also to evoke strong emotions in viewers through sculpture, light, and scale. Goeritz not only infuses his work with emotion but also applies his theory as he creates structurally intriguing, abstract pieces.

Francisco Toledo’s work is embedded with themes from the myths of his Indigenous Zapotec culture. Often reflecting his great appreciation for unusual animals and nature, Toledo’s art bridges myths of creation and re-creation. Toledo was a tireless cultural promoter, social activist, and philanthropist who, in 2004, created a series of handmade books as a charity project for a local library. In Pez, Toledo worked closely with the Taller de Grafica Popular atelier, now known as Mixografia, to create prints with enhanced dimensionality and texture, departing from traditional printmaking methods.

Although Friedeberg’s artworks are sometimes described as Surrealist or Fantastic Realist, they are not easily definable in terms of conventional categories. His works include phantasmagorical spaces populated with borrowed, personal, and popular symbols. The title, No hay mal que bien no venga, translates to “Every cloud has a silver lining.”