José Luis Cuevas and José Gómez Sicre: Mexican Artist and Washington Patron during the Cold War

In the 1950s and 1960s in Mexico, there was perhaps no artist more controversial, or attention-seeking, than the young José Luis Cuevas.  What most distinguished him among his contemporaries was his public crusade against the “Mexican School,” the revolutionary-nationalist current of painting, printmaking, and muralism which dated to the 1920s.  This latter camp included some of Mexico’s most celebrated artists, including the great muralist Diego Rivera.  Yet for Cuevas and his peers, the Mexican School had become a stifling academic orthodoxy imposed on younger artists in Mexico.

Cuevas stood out from his contemporaries in another respect: he eventually received considerable recognition for his work in the United States and Europe.  A crucial personal and professional connection in this regard was José Gómez Sicre, the Director of Visual Arts at the Organization of American States (OAS).  Through his exhibitions in Washington, DC, Gómez Sicre had increasingly become a kingmaker in the arts in Latin America.  He was also a vocal anti-Communist and pointed critic of political art, including of the Mexican School.  For Cuevas, Gómez Sicre was not only a patron: he was also perhaps his closest friend.

In Mexico, both men, and their relationship, were the object of criticism, particularly from artists and intellectuals associated with the Mexican School and the nationalist left.  This dovetailed with broader criticisms in Mexican society of the OAS, and the role of the United States within it.  Gómez Sicre was viewed by many as an agent of American cultural imperialism, and Cuevas as his local proxy.

This paper will thus focus on the personal and professional relationship between the two men, their politico-aesthetic battles, and their significance to the relationship between the United States and Mexico in the visual arts during the first two decades of the Cold War.