How a constellation of 6 artists — all women — helped make Modernism more Mexican
LA TimesThe reputation of late Mexico City designer Clara Porset has, for a long time, rested, quite literally, on a chair. Today, Porset’s furnishings are treated like fetish objects, with online design shops touting chairs “in the style of Clara Porset” and her surviving pieces fetching thousands of dollars online. “I felt like there was a hole in the design knowledge,” says Ryan, who also chairs the Art Institute’s department of architecture and design. Porset, in particular, left behind “a big body of work, and very little of that work was known — even in Mexico.” The show zeroes in on a key moment in Mexican history: the decades around World War II when the country was attracting artists from all over the world and Mexican art was materializing in high-profile institutions in the U.S.. “It’s this post-revolutionary period in Mexico,” Ryan says. This milieu influenced Porset, who proceeded to create furnishings that embraced both Mexican craft traditions and International Style Modernism, resulting in pieces she described as “our own kind of furniture.” Clara Porset’s “Totonac Chair,” designed in the 1950s, at the Art Institute.
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