AS Presents the Work of Lilia Carrillo, a Key Figure of Mexico's Generación de la Ruptura

New York, May 12, 2026—Opening at Americas Society on May 13, 2026, the exhibition Lilia Carrillo: Ruptures and Premonitions will introduce the work of Lilia Carrillo (1930–1974) to a New York audience, positioning her as a central force of the post-war group of Mexican painters known as the Generación de la Ruptura (Rupture Generation).

The show, which will be on view until August 1, 2026, features two dozen of her most accomplished paintings from 1961 until 1974, alongside a selection of archival photographs, letters, invitations, and publications, which document her active role in the diverse and often-controversial cultural landscape of her time.

“While Lilia Carrillo’s paintings dialogue with the gestural practices of her European informalist and North American Abstract Expressionist peers, they also allude these tendencies through the diversity of their mark-making and layered surfaces, maintaining an enigmatic uniqueness, one that additionally has no equivalent within the artist’s Generación de la Ruptura,” said Tobias Ostrander, who is the Estrellita B. Brodsky curator-at-large of Latin American Art at the Tate Modern.

“By focusing on ‘ruptures’ and ‘premonitions,’ the exhibition seeks to highlight the works’ mysterious and ritual character, while also addressing their references to the challenging environmental and political contexts in which they were made,” added the curator. Born in 1930 in Mexico City, Carrillo is considered the most prominent female protagonist within this group of Mexican painters.

The artist and her circle sought a decisive break from Mexican muralism, turning instead toward abstraction. This shift allowed them to engage in international dialogue with painterly tendencies occurring in New York and Paris. The exhibition shows the artist’s disruptive gestures of building up thick surfaces that she then carved or scratched into, integrating collaged fabrics or paper fragments into her canvases, smudging her compositions, and using brushes of diverse sizes and other tools to apply and disperse her pigments.

The show is also animated by the notion of premonitions, or the feeling an ominous event is going to occur. Her 1970 painting, Premonition, reflects Carrillo’s heightened awareness of mortality following a spinal aneurysm—the complications of which would lead to her death—as well as her interest in surrealist and ritual practices.

Lilia Carrillo: Ruptures and Premonitions also showcases the historical shift in Mexico's social environment and mood as reflected in Carrillo’s work. While her early 1960s works express an exploratory optimism—coinciding with the country's economic boom and rapid urban growth—her later canvases respond to a darkening political climate, including the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre and growing environmental concerns. In her final years, Carrillo’s celestial references transformed into expansive compositions evocative of smog and debris.

The exhibition is part of Art at Americas Society’s Women Artists Series, dedicated to important yet underrecognized women artists from Latin America. The series began in 2022 with an exhibition of Mexican sculptor Geles Cabrera. It continued in 2023 with a show on Chilean interdisciplinary artist Sylvia Palacios Whitman, in 2024 with a mid-career survey of Argentine artist Alejandra Seeber, and in 2025 with a survey of Colombian artist Fanny Sanín.

To accompany the show, Americas Society will present a series of public programs and two publications: an exhibition catalogue and the first monograph about Lilia Carrillo. The bilingual monograph about the painter will be printed in the United States and internationally to support exhibitions of the artist’s work at Americas Society (2026) and the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes (2025). With texts by authors including art historian Leah Dickerman, the book will be produced in both Spanish and English.

Press contact: mediarelations@as-coa.org

Funders:

The presentation of Lilia Carrillo: Ruptures and Premonitions has been made possible by generous support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Fundación Coppel, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and Marjorie and Michael Levine.

Americas Society acknowledges the generous support of the Arts of the Americas Circle members: Amalia Amoedo, Estrellita B. Brodsky, Virginia Cowles Schroth, Emily Engel, Isabella Hutchinson, Carolina Jannicelli, Diana López and Herman Sifontes, Elena Matsuura, Maggie Miqueo, Maria Mostajo, Antonio Murzi, Gabriela Pérez Rocchietti, Marco Pappalardo and Cintya Poletti Pappalardo, Carolina Pinciroli, Erica Roberts, Sharon Schultz, and Edward J. Sullivan.