Rivera

An Austin museum specializing in contemporary Latin American art has roughly 12 new pieces to display courtesy of a former Tyler couple.

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin campus was gifted 12 modern and contemporary art pieces, including paintings, drawings and sculptures from college alumni Judy and Charles Tate, who now live in the Houston area.

Mrs. Tate comes from a distinguished Tyler family. Her mother, Mary John Grelling Spence, served as queen of the Texas Rose Festival in 1940; her sister, Louise Grelling-Spence, was crowned queen in 1968; and Mrs. Tate was a lady-in-waiting in the 1970 festival.

The art, plus an endowment to support the museum’s Latin American curatorship, is valued at close to $10 million, according to the museum.

“The Blanton is known for several things, and one of the collections we are known for is our Latin American collection,” Kathleen Brady Stimpert, director of public relations for the museum, said. “We were one of the first museums in the U.S. to seriously start collecting Latin American art, and the first to appoint a curator of Latin American art in 1988. The Museum of Modern Art quickly followed suit, as well as the Houston Museum of Fine Art.”

The gift includes works from the famous couple Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Ms. Kahlo was severely injured when she was young, and took to painting while she recovered, according to her foundation’s website. She lived most of her life with chronic pain, and is best known for her self-portraits, often portraying pain. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds, according to the website. She also is known as a feminist icon.

The Tate’s donation includes Ms. Kahlo’s small self portrait “Karma.” It is done in pencil.

Rivera had some success as a cubist painter and personally knew Pablo Picasso, according to biography.com. After the Mexican and Russian revolutions, Rivera focused on art that represented working class and native Mexican people.

He was also a well-known muralist, painting several murals in the U.S. and in Mexico, according to biography.com.

A mural he was commissioned to paint by the Rockefellers on the RCA building created controversy in New York. The mural, titled “Man at the Crossroads,” included the Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin, the website reads.

The Rockefellers asked Rivera to remove Lenin from the painting, but he refused. The family destroyed the painting in 1934.

Rivera and Ms. Kahlo married in 1929, according to biography.com. He was 20 years older. They divorced and then got back together. Each had multiple affairs during their marriage.

The Tate collection includes a small cubist drawing done by Rivera.

Another heavyweight in the collection is a sculpture by Fernando Botero. His work experimented with proportions and size, and includes bloated and overweight people and animals, according to biography.com.

Other notable artists in the collection include Tarsila do Amaral, Lygia Clark, Carlos Merida, Wifredo Lam, Armando Reveron, Alejandro Xul Solar and Joaquin Torres-Garcia among others, according to the museum.

The collection spans from the early 20th century to present, with artists who were key to the creation of modernism in Latin America.

Ms. Stimpert said about 70 of the donated pieces are currently on display.

“The great thing about this collection is it fills in some gaps in our own collection …,” she said. “The collection is wonderful.”

For more information on all the pieces in the collection and for the museum times, visit www.blantonmuesum.org .

Charles and Judy Tate could not be reached for comment.