'José María Velasco: A View of Mexico' co-curated by Dexter Dalwood at The National Gallery, London

31 March 2025

Until 17 August, the first monographic exhibition in the UK devoted to José María Velasco (1840–1912), Mexico’s most celebrated 19th-century painter, will take place at the National Gallery. The exhibition is curated by artist and independent curator Dexter Dalwood and Daniel Sobrino Ralston, the National Gallery’s CEEH (Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica) Associate Curator of Spanish Paintings, from an initial concept by Dexter Dalwood.

'José María Velasco: A View of Mexico', the first-ever exhibition that the National Gallery has dedicated to a Latin American artist, coincides with the 200th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the UK and Mexico. The exhibition will present around 30 paintings and drawings, with most from private and public Mexican collections, including 17 from the Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico’s leading public museum. José María Velasco is famed for his monumental paintings of the Valley of Mexico, the area surrounding Mexico City. Painted during decades of tremendous social change, his precise yet lyrical works depict Mexico’s magnificent scenery and rapid industrialisation.

The exhibition touches on broader concerns about the relationship between human beings and the environment, seen through the lens of late 19th-century painters who addressed extraordinary ecological change, a theme that still resonates today.

Dexter Dalwood says "José María Velasco’s paintings were able to absorb the tradition and history of European landscape painting while taking the depiction and understanding of the Mexican landscape to a new level of pictorial intelligence."

Exhibition organised by the National Gallery, London, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Find out more via The National Gallery.

Image: José María Velasco, The Textile Mill of La Carolina, Puebla, 1887, Oil on canvas, 76.6 × 107.8 cm, © The National Museum of the Czech Republic, Prague. Photo: Denisa Dimitrovova, Lender: National Museum of the Czech Republic, Prague