Urban Artists

Many Modernist Mexican artists focused on the topic of contemporary life as it was lived in the capital. They contrasted the bustle of the city streets, theatres and circuses with the seeming timelessness of life on the land. Particularly, their work highlighted the disparities between wealth and poverty and often implied a strong social criticism of the country's social order. Emilio Baz Viaud's painting Cuauhtemoltzin Street is a case in point. Painted in 1941, it shows a now demolished, dead-end street in the center of Mexico City that was a "zone of tolerance" for prostitution. The work's garish palette highlights the discordant tone of the scene in which all the characters are both the hunter and the prey.