CARLOS MÉRIDA (GUATEMALAN 1895-1984)
EL SIGNO - YELLOW FIGURES ON A BROWN GROUND
£3,000
Auction: 15 March 2017 at 11:00 GMT
Description
Signed and dated 1965, gouache and graphite on amate paper laid on masonite
Dimensions
42.5cm x 33cm (16.75in x 13in)
Footnote
Note:
Carlos Mérida is one of the most celebrated of Latin-American 20th century artists. Born in Guatemala City, he moved to the country with his parents but returned to the city in 1909 to study at the Instituto de Artes y Artesanias. Although music was his first love, he now resolved on a career as an artist. While a student he began to make contacts among the intelligentsia, including Jaime Sabartés (the biographer of Picasso) and the painter Carlos Valenti. He was helped by Sabartés to organize his first one man show in Guatemala city in 1910.
Mérida travelled to Paris with Valenti in 1910 and while there met members of the artistic community including Picasso, Mondrian and Modigliani and the Latin-American artists Diego Rivera and Angel Zarraga. However, after just four months Valenti shot himself dead. Deeply affected by this tragedy, Mérida temporarily lost interest in his art but was encouraged not to give up by the Mexican muralist Roberto Montenegro. He remained in France until 1914 and the outbreak of war, at which point he returned to Guatemala and began to engage with its folklore. In 1919 he married a Mexican and moved permanently to Mexico, shortly after the Mexican Revolution and a year before Diego Rivera was to return from Europe.
Mérida's first exhibition in Mexico was in 1920 at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. In that same year, he exhibited in the United States at the Hispanic Society of New York and in 1922 participated in both the Independent Artists Exhibition and at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in Guatemala. Joining an artists' group, the Renacimiento Mexicano (Mexican Renaissance) he went on that same year to work with Rivera as an assistant at the Bolivar Amphitheatre in Mexico City, and with Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros founded the Union of Workers, Technicians, Painters and Sculptors. His first mural as a solo artist was a commission in 1923 to paint the Children's Library of the Ministry of Public Education with a mural entitled Little Red Riding Hood and the Four Elements.
He then had an important one man show at the Valentin Dudesing Gallery in New York in 1926.
Mérida constantly experimented with techniques and his work can be divided into three periods: a figurative period from 1907 to 1926, a surrealist period from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s and from 1950 until his death, a geometric period.
In 1927 he again visited Paris, staying for two years and while there took on board Surrealist influences, in particular from Klee, Kandinsky and Miro. During this Surrealist period he experimented with abstraction, making him almost unique among Mexican artists. Although influenced by the Europeans, he maintained his belief in an indigenous Latin-American art firmly rooted in the Mayan and Aztec civilizations, along with the colonial period. His later works fused elements from the Mayan world with geometric abstraction and he also integrated into many of his smaller-scale paintings the indigenous Mexican "papel amate" (bark wood paper).
In addition to creating drawings, canvasses and murals, Mérida also worked in education. In 1932, he founded the dance school of the Secretariat of Public Education with Carlos Orozco Romero and ran it for three years. This interest in dance also prompted numerous designs for stage sets and costumes.
In 1942 he went to teach at the North Texas State Teachers College in Denton and over the next 20 years held another 45 shows in the USA and 18 in Mexico, participating in the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1940 in Mexico City.
In the late 1940s, Mérida began to make murals again, notably at the Secretaria de Rucursos Hidraulicos. From 1949 he also began to investigate the integration of different arts and 1950 he again visited Europe specifically to study Venetian mosaic techniques. On his return home he undertook a major project with the celebrated architect Pani for the Benito Juárez housing project (which sadly was destroyed in the 1985 earthquake).
From the 1950s onwards Mérida's art began to show a Constructivist style, which was demonstrated in murals and mosaics in such projects as those at the Alianza Insurance building in Mexico City (1953), the City Hall of Guatemala City (1956), the Instituto Guatemalteco de Seguridad Social, the Crédito Hipotectario Nacional and at the Bank of Guatemala. In 1957 Mérida won the acquisition prize at the IV Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil and in 1958 received Order of Quetzal from the Guatemalan government. His first retrospective was in 1966, an in 1980 he received the Orden del Aguila Azteca from Mexico. The Palacio de Bellas Artes held further retrospectives in 1981 and 1992.