Museo Blaisten

Av. Ricardo Flores Magón 1, Tlatelolco, Cuauhtémoc, 06900 Ciudad de México, CDMX
http://www.museoblaisten.com/

One of the most important collections of Mexican artwork is housed at the Museo Colección Blaisten in Tlatelolco, practically next door to the Plaza de las Tres Culturas (“Plaza of the Three Cultures”) and the Tlatelolco archeological zone. Some call it the largest and most complete collection of Mexican art in the world, and it certainly is one of the most important of its kind. The Andrés Blaisten collection was founded in 1978 and ever since it has been carefully curated in order to include a selection of artists and works that meet a conceptual and execution excellence, while preferably ignoring previous groups and ideological or political affiliations. The collection is made up of 12,000 works of painting, sculpture, graphics, and photography by more than 800 artists, the collection encompasses from the colonial period to the 21st century, with its core being artwork from the early XX century.

The Colección Andrés Blaisten has had somewhat of a nomadic history; from 2007 to 2012 it was housed at the Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco (Tlatelolco University Cultural Center) and now has recently returned at that location since December 2020 (they’re open from Tuesdays to Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.). At other times the collection has been available in a virtual format. The Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco is the building that used to be the headquarters of the Secretariat of Foreign Relations (and 1 of the 3 cultures on display at the “Plaza of the Three Cultures”, representing post-Independence Mexico).

Andrés Blaisten is one of the most important collectors of Mexican art in the world, he created the Museo Colección Blaisten in conjunction with the National Autonomus University of Mexico (UNAM). Blaisten was originally born in Argentina but emigrated to Mexico when he was 14 years old in the 1950s.

The paintings in the Andrés Blaisten collection are from the first two-thirds of the XX century and belong to the modernist, surrealist, cubist, and symbolist movements, The museum also hosts temporary exhibits, such as those dedicated to Mexican painter María Izquierdo and American photographer Spencer Tunick, in recent times. Some of the artists included in the collection are: Lola Cueto, Rufino Tamayo, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rosario Cabrera, Celia Calderón, etc. Andres Blaisten’s point of view as an immigrant may have found a different point of view in regards to Mexican art, which led him to have one of the most important collections of it in the world.