Francisco Díaz de León

Díaz de León is a good example of how Mexican artists-without ever having been in the old world- were up to date on the European aesthetic innovations and shows how, in the National School of Fine Arts, they worked an open stylistic renovation, beyond that of the academists. A tray of fruit, in delicate pastels, shows Díaz de León´s assimilation of the compositional lesson of Cézanne, while at the same time it utilizes free and moving chromatics, more in accord with those of Fauves. Around 1921, Mexican art was fully modern and Muralism was but one step in the continuing search for aesthetic answers which had been going since the end of the XIX century in the artistic scene in Mexico.