Mexico City's contemporary art scene.....

Mexico City has a really rich contemporary art scene, always with a myriad of exciting and stimulating exhibitions on display. Take a look at the sheer range and variety that was on offer last weekend in the city. The blockbuster exhibition at present, with over 100 original Surrealist works, is the Magritte at Bellas Artes until July....

Holding centrestage at a private gallery in Colonia San Rafael (Galeria Hilario Galguera, Franciso Pimental 3) is Britsh artist Damien Hirst's "Dark Trees", an exhibition of over 30 "blue" paintings which indeed are a series of intense blue/black oils most with a white skull hovering...

Hirst's work exhibits so well here in Mexico as it seamlessly slots right in alongside all the skull and Day of the Dead imagery so ubiquitous throughout Mexico. Here are posters on display at Mumedi Design Museum (Francisco Madero, Centro Historico) which form part of a competition illustrating the poem by Alvaro Rego Garcia de Alba " A la Muerte con una sonrisa" (To Death with a smile...)

With maxims on these posters such as "muero, luego existe" (I die, therefore I exist) and "una forme diferente de vida" (a different form of life) it is not hard to appreciate the central place Death continues to hold in Mexican culture. On offer at the Museum of Modern Art is the intriguing and beguiling work of Surrealist Spanish artist Remedios Varo who fled the aftermath of the Civil War in 1941 to live in Mexico....

I love the title of the painting depicted bottom right "Woman leaving her psychotherapist". Exhibited in the beautiful colonial Palacio de Iturbide (now the Banamex Cultural centre) on Francisco Madero, Centro Historico, is an interesting exhibition about the Peruvian writer Mario Llosa Vargas plus a wonderful retrospective of the Oaxacan painter Rodolfo Nieto (1936-1985), an artist who was both inspired by European avant garde trends as well as his native Mexico...

Just further along Madero in the courtyard in front of the Latin American Tower, Mexican artist Paloma Torres (aptly named) exhibits her own sculptural towers against a backdrop of photos depicting the high density of both population and construction in Mexico City. Her exhibition is entitled "Ciudad de Construccion"....

Last weekend culminated in Mexico's largest contemporary Art Fair MACO at the Banamex Centre on Conscripto with hundreds of private galleries showing their work from as far afield as Sweden, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Columbia, and Brazil. The Mexico City Galleries more than held their own alongside such leading lights of the contemporary art world.....

Back outside Bellas Artes is a very avant garde and unconventional interpretation of the twelve apostles by artist Vladimir Cora "Los Apostoles". The painted wooden sculptures are a favourite backdrop for photographs right now....

And finally full circle, back inside Bellas Artes, let's not forget the wonderful permanent display of the Mexican muralists - Rivera, Siqueiros, Tamayao, and Orozco....

Look at the amazing perspective in that Siqueiros mural depicted bottom right! (Although that probably does not forgive him for the part he played in the assassination of Leon Trotsky here in the city!) Are you an Art fan? Interested particularly in contemporary art?? You could do far worse than coming to spend some time gallery-hopping here in Mexico City - You will not be disappointed! For more gorgeous glimpses of the world this week check out My World Tuesday by clicking here.