Two Book Events on Avant-Garde Art and Artists of the Mexican Renaissance

PRLog (Press Release) - May 23, 2012 - Washington, DC – Susannah Joel Glusker, daughter of Anita Brenner, will discuss her book, "Avant-Garde Art and Artists in Mexico: Anita Brenner’s Journals of the Roaring Twenties," at the Mexican Cultural Institute and The Library of Congress next week. These events are free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase.

Thursday, May 31 at 6:30 PM                      
Mexican Cultural Institute                              
2829 16th Street NW                                      
Washington, DC 20009

Friday, June 1 at Noon
Library of Congress Hispanic Division
Madison Building, Pickford Theater
101 Independence Avenue SW
Washington, DC 20003

The Mexican Revolution opened a new era in Mexican art and letters now known as the “Mexican Renaissance.” In Mexico City, a coterie of artists including Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros explored how art could forward revolutionary ideals—and, in the process, spent countless hours talking, gossiping, arguing, and partying. Into this milieu came Anita Brenner, in her early twenties already trying her hand as a journalist, art critic, and anthropologist. Her journals of the period 1925 to 1930 vividly transport us to this vital moment in Mexico, when building a “new nation” was the goal.

Brenner became a member of Rivera’s inner circle, and her journals provide fascinating portraits of its members, including Orozco, Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo, and Jean Charlot, with whom she had an unusual loving relationship. She captures the major and minor players in the act of creating works for which they are now famous and records their comings and goings, alliances and feuds. Brenner also reveals her own maturation as a perceptive observer and writer who, at twenty-four, published her first book, Idols Behind Altars.

SUSANNAH JOEL GLUSKER, Mexico City, Mexico, is the daughter of Anita Brenner and author of the book Anita Brenner: A Mind of Her Own. Glusker teaches “Mexican Women of Note” and “Mexican Art of the Early Twentieth Century” at the Universidad Iberoamericana, translates, and writes for various publications.

ANITA BRENNER (1905–1974) was a journalist, historian, anthropologist, art critic, and creative writer, and one of Mexico’s most discerning interpreters. She is known for her landmark books Idols Behind Altars, Your Mexican Holiday, and The Wind That Swept Mexico.

About the book:  Avant-Garde Art and Artists in Mexico: Anita Brenner’s Journals
of the Roaring Twenties
Edited by Susannah Joel Glusker
Foreword by Carlos Monsiváis
$125.00      
hardcover, two volumes in a slipcase              
ISBN 978-0-292-72184-5
9 x 10 inches, 901 pages, 597 color and b&w photos
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/gluava.html