Carlos Mérida
Guatemalan, 1891-1984 (active Mexico)
Sky No. 1, 1943
watercolor, gouache, ink on rice paper
17 x 12 ½ in.
SBMA, Gift of Mrs. MacKinley Helm
1969.35.26
Carlos Merida, ca. 1950 / Florence Arquin, photographer.
Robert Henri wrote, and his words apply well to Carlos Mérida, his life, and his work: “Art tends toward balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living — very good things for anyone to be interested in.”
RESEARCH PAPER
In November, 1961, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the birth of Carlos Mérida, the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, organized a long awaited and much needed comprehensive exhibition of the work of the great Guatemalan abstract artist. For, in the face of a national tradition profoundly subjective, and even folkloristic, Mérida has been a formal rather than a romantic painter; constantly he moved toward even further simplifications and greater refinements. Further, this cultivated, retiring artist has been virtually alone in his exploration, just as he has been in his consistent emphasis on easel painting. One has but to compare the turbulent spirit and art of Siqueiros with the exquisite, immaculate surfaces achieved by Mérida to realize anew what complete and valid opposites can thrive simultaneously in the vital art of our century.
Mérida was born in Quezaltenango, Guatemala, in 1891. Originally he had intended to be a musician, but an ear affliction that began when he was fifteen suggested that he turn to the visual arts instead. At this same period he was acquainted with the poet Jaime Sabartes who was then operating a clothing store in Guatemala City. Sabartes had spent years abroad, and in Barcelona had been an intimate friend of Picasso’s; indeed he was to return to Europe and eventually become Picasso’s secretary and biographer. From Sabartes Mérida first learned of the ferment in contemporary European painting. In 1910 the young artist went to Paris where he was associated with Modgliani and studied with Van Dongen. After traveling through France, Spain, Belgium, and Holland, he returned to Guatemala in 1914, where he initiated a pro-Indian art movement in association with the sculptor Yela Gunther. The early years of the First World War were spent in Guatemala where, as MacKinley Helm has pointed out, he seems to have rediscovered Maya color patterns himself before he had actually seen Maya painting.
In 1919 Mérida came to Mexico, two years before Rivera’s return from Europe, thus giving to the Mexican public its first view of Indian inspired subjects. With José Vasconcelos, Jean Charlot, and others, Mérida was an invaluable member of the vanguard of intellectuals converging on Mexico City as the Revolution ended, and as the new revolution in that country’s art began.
Rivera returned from Europe in 1921 and with the first commissions from the new Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors, he enlisted the assistance of Mérida in the execution of the National Preparatory School frescoes. Vasconcelos gave Mérida his own first fresco commission to decorate the Children’s Library in the Ministry of Education.
Mérida’s first New York exhibition was held in 1926 at the Valentin-Dudensing Gallery, and the following year he returned to Europe, renewing his acquaintance with and admiration of Paul Klee and Joan Miró. Mérida is perhaps the most original surrealist Mexico has produced, just as he is the most accomplished abstract artist, and the affinity with Klee and Miró is natural.
Returning to Mexico in 1929 Mérida continued to exhibit widely, both there and abroad. With the organization of Escuela de Danza in 1931 he became its director, and for the next three years instigated the ballet’s return to indigenous sources, summoning native choreographers, and actually designing for it himself.
With Orozco Romero he directed the Galerie de Arte Moderno, holding the first major exhibitions of Tamayo and Orozco. In 1941 he came to Denton, Texas, where he remained two years teaching at the North Texas State Teachers College.
As a muralist Mérida has been greatly overshadowed by the triumvirate of Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco, and his impressive natural aptitude for relating painting and architecture has been adequately employed only since 1949. Since that date he has collaborated fruitfully with such eminent architects as Mario Pani, del Moral, and Struck, resulting in such distinguished achievements as the multifamiliar “Presidente Beniot Juarez”, the edificio Reaseguras Alianza, and the Credito Buristal. In 1955 he returned to Guatemala to decorate the new Palacio Municipal. Subsequently in 1958 he executed the exterior murals for the Instituto Guatemalteco de Seguridad Social, also in Guatemala City. A number of private homes have been enriched with his mural paintings. In 1957 he participated in the IV Bienal de Sao Paolo.
The 1961 exhibition at the National Palace of Fine Arts, a large portion of which constitutes the San Antonio exhibition, thus honors an influential teacher, an historic figure in Mexican art of this century, and one of the most accomplished painters of our time. We are hereby enabled to trace his evolution and to measure for the first time his scope and his power.
The special characteristics of Mérida’s fully developed style are present in the earliest canvases painted after his return from Paris in 1914. Here are the strong patterns, the firm, terse draftsmanship, and the clearly demarcated colors. From the beginning it is a rational and a thoughtful art, having nothing to do with the impetuous.
Further, as noted, it is an art based on Indian sources. Mérida, however, is not a painter of narratives, an illustrator, as is Rivera; instead, the myths and legends of Middle America exist for him, as Paul Westheim has pointed out, as an essential part of his spiritual heritage, just as the classic Mediterranean myth is an integral part of the spiritual patrimony of Picasso. The undulant contours of Tarascan ceramics reappear in the paintings of the 1930s, just as in the more recent work the two-dimensionality, the restricted yet gorgeous palette, and the formal sequence of shapes may be related to Mayan painting of the Classic period.
The vast majority of Mérida’s paintings concern the human figure, increasingly abstracted as he reaches his fullest development. The witty designs for a mural for a hotel in Acapulco, and the dancing figures planned for the edificio Reaseguras Alianza, exist as a series of sharp, clear, rectangular shapes forcefully opposed one against the other. The effect is lucid, and as exhilarating as a performance of chamber music. Going even further, there have been numerous essays into the completely non-objective, always undertaken intellectually rather than intuitively. In this exploration of the formal, the rational in painting, Mérida has been alone in Mexico. (The rational, the intellectual is apt to be, wherever he is working.) As a surrealist, however, Mérida has had more company, but even here his approach is “pure”, abstract rather than literary. Mérida is a surrealist in the sense that Miró is, just as Frieda Kahlo is more related to the quasi-Freudian story telling Dali.
Prepared for the SBMA Docent Council website by Ralph Wilson and Loree Gold, 2013
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
At the age of seventeen, Carlos Mérida traveled to Paris for four years of study, befriending Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani. Upon his return to Guatemala, the artist, of Maya- Quiché descent, joined artist Rafael Yela Günther to promote a pro-Indian movement in the arts, informing modern art with pre-Columbian concepts. Unable to rouse interest in Guatemala, Mérida moved to Mexico, where he found a public more receptive to his folkloric yet modern imagery.
During World War II, Mexico City became a haven for an international group of Surrealist artists and writers seeking to escape the ravages of war. Their creative and intellectual activity culminated in the journal Dyn and in the landmark International Exhibition of Surrealism held at the Galería de Arte Mexicano in Mexico City in 1940, both of which featured work by Mérida.
In their small scale, inflated volumes, and simplified features, the three figures in Fuga and those in Sky No. 1 are modeled after Tlatilco figurines. Artist and ethnographer Miguel Covarrubias led the first controlled excavation of the Tlatilco site in the Valley of Mexico, publishing photographs and archaeological illustrations in Dyn in 1943. However, the figures also resemble the biomorphic forms of Surrealists Joan Miró and Roberto Matta.
SBMA title card, 2013