MEXICAN REVOLUTION IN TWO SHOWS BY CASASOLA

Scenes of the Mexican Revolution by photojournalist Augustin Victor Casasola can be seen at two local galleries this month: The Plaza de la Raza and UCLA’s Frederick S. Wight Gallery.

“The World of Augustin Victor Casasola: Mexico 1900-1938,” opening Tuesday at UCLA, offers a broad representation of Casasola’s work through more than 140 photographs. Views of a cocky Emiliano Zapata and a charismatic Pancho Villa, as well as images of common citizens, their lives torn apart by war, convey the spirit and agony of the national conflict.

A photographic chronicle of post-revolutionary Mexican society and culture is also a part of the display, which is accompanied by a three-part exhibition featuring politically-themed graphics and woodcut murals by Mexican and Cuban artists. All exhibits end Dec. 29.

“Images of the Mexican Revolution,” at Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Park, is devoted exclusively to Casasola’s photographs of the conflict. It depicts the primary causes and the characters involved through 101 prints taken from 1910 to 1920. The exhibit, which opened last week, runs through Dec. 28.

According to Dr. Miguel Dominguez, the curator of the Plaza de la Raza display, the simultaneous showing of Casasola’s photographs at the two institutions was a coincidence.

Beginning Tuesday, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will host an exhibition of works by the preeminent 19th-Century American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

The display, housed in the museum’s recently renovated Charles Engelhard Court, features about 60 pieces, including preliminary studies, reductions and replicas of monuments, cameos, busts and reliefs in marble and bronze, and gold coins. One highlight will be Saint-Gaudens’ statue of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, brought inside for the show from the city’s Madison Square Park. The exhibit is the third in a museum series of works by American sculptors and will run through Jan. 26.

A new gallery opens Saturday at the San Diego Museum of Art. Named after Maxwell and Muriel Gluck, the late Ambassador (to Ceylon, in the ‘50s) and his wife who funded its construction, the new space will house works donated to the museum from the couple’s private collection. Works by such artists as John Hoppner, Maurice de Vlaminck, Georges Braque and Pierre Bonnard will be installed in the gallery, located on the second floor of the museum.

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth has acquired a rare and highly sought-after still life by Spanish painter Luis Melendez. “Still Life with Oranges, Jars and Boxes of Sweets” is a newly discovered painting, executed in Madrid between 1760 and 1765.

“Melendez brought a phenomenal sense of monumentality to the natural forms he depicted,” said Dr. William B. Jordan, deputy director of the Kimbell, in a prepared statement. The artist is one of the best-known Spanish painters of the 18th Century, and fewer than 100 of his works have survived.

“I respect the permanence, weight and beauty of concrete and its ability to take almost any shape,” says artist David Hertz.

Living up to his words, Hertz has shaped concrete into furniture and placed the functional art on view at the Schindler House for an exhibition to run through Jan. 5. Eighteen pieces, including tables, chairs and a light fixture are in the display, accompanied by working drawings executed on galvanized sheet metal and concrete slabs suspended from the ceilings. Schindler House is located at 835 N. Kings Road in West Hollywood.

A 15-foot section of the “Santa Monica Library Mural” painted in 1935 by Stanton Macdonald-Wright is part of an exhibition of his works which opened last Saturday at USC’s Atelier in the Santa Monica Place.

The show, which continues through Jan. 12, presents an overview of Macdonald-Wright’s work, through pieces on loan from public and private collections.

Macdonald-Wright, who studied art in Paris around 1907, developed a system of painting with American painter Morgan Russell which they called “synchromism” (abstracted subject matter with color rhythmically used, akin to sound in music). In 1916 he moved to New York and then came to California.

From 1935 to 1942 the artist was director of and technical adviser to the Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects in California and other western states. His travels and philosophical interests in Zen Buddhism led to repeated travels to the Orient. He died in Santa Monica in 1973.

A small selection from the many artifacts found in the burial complex of the First Emperor of China (he reigned from 221-206 BC) is on display in the lobby of the Hall of Administration of Ambassador College, 300 W. Green St., Pasadena. The 1974 archeological excavation uncovered more than 7,500 terra-cotta soldiers and horses buried in a vast vault to stand watch over the Emperor’s mausoleum.

One six-foot figure of a Chinese warrior and one of the more than 500 life-size horses found in the vault, are shown alongside weapons, coins, spear points and other artifacts.

Admission is free. Information: (818) 304-6123.

The IDM Corp. has selected California artist Tony DeLap to create a sculpture for the courtyard plaza at its office complex currently under construction in downtown Long Beach. IDM, a real estate developer, chose DeLap’s design in a six-month competition.