In his novel Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry’s protagonists encounter a dying peasant on a Mexican highway. He has been murdered by the local police. This scene is echoed in some of the images contained in the British Museum’s exhibition, Revolution on Paper: Mexican prints 1910-1960. The artists showcased here were highly politicised, left-wing activists who saw the Revolution, which began in 1910, as an on-going aspect of Mexican life. Their adoption of the print medium afforded opportunities to broadcast, with often Goya-like horror, the suffering of the poor, predominantly indigenous population and the brutality or indifference of the middle and ruling classes.

The Revolution was both romantic legend – Emiliano Zapata leads his beautiful white horse to victory in Diego Rivera’s celebrated lithograph – and a way of life expressed through vigilant anti-fascist propaganda. These artists practiced what they preached. David Siqueiros, a passionate Stalinist, was exiled for his role in Trotsky’s assassination in 1940. Rivera, by contrast, had done his best to protect his Russian guest.

The catalogue is a must as it provides the social and historical background missing from the brief descriptions in the exhibition. The space is divided thematically between historical perspective and contemporary commentary, including graphic works by the great muralists Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros. The manifesto of the artistic revolution promoted the reinterpretation of Mexico’s pre-Columbian past through traditional form. Pyramids, squared physiognomy and geometric coincidences render works like Carlos Romero’s aquatints almost Cubist in aspiration. Siqueiros’ monumental murals of the 1920s translate to his more intimate portraits a decade later, where faces loom large across the entire sheet. Nothing, not even Rivera’s Self-Portrait and especially not his nude studies, was undefined by revolution. But it’s not all formal machismo. Celia Calderon’s achingly beautiful Boy Eating offers both social observation and a gentle reflection on genre.

Until Apr 5

KEVIN CHILDS