Ten painters who took art off the easel and onto the public wall, from Mexico City to Detroit to the flood channels of Los Angeles. When the guns of the Mexican Revolution fell silent, a new minister of education named José Vasconcelos handed the country's painters something no gallery could offer: walls.

Ten painters who carried their easels out of the studio and into the light, and changed what a picture could be. In April 1874, a group of painters rejected or ignored by the official Paris Salon rented the former studio of the photographer Nadar on the boulevard des Capucines and hung their own show.

From the cubist earthquake of 1907 to the graffiti-charged canvases of the 1980s, these are the ten painters who taught the twentieth century how to see itself. No century asked more of painting than the twentieth.

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This event has taken place. It was held on Saturday, February 28, 2026.

On 11 September 1841 an American portrait painter patented a tin tube with a screw cap. Almost everything people love about the next fifty years of painting follows from it.