by Mildred Boyd

     Artistically speaking the old world had little to teach those whose ancestors had been creating magnificent works since time began. The most ancient ruins have yielded statues and murals of awesome beauty and power. In the colossal Olmec heads and the painted walls of Teotihuacan; in the tiny Jaina figurines and the Bonomapak murals and, after the Conquest, in the lavish display of saints and virgins in countless churches; the consummate skill of generations of artists is everywhere evident.
     Small wonder, then, that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the art world was rocked by a veritable explosion of works by Mexican painters. The real wonder is that it had not happened much sooner.

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