Modern Art from Mexico
Painting and sculpture
In 1949 Margarita Nelken received a commission from the state to write a book with the tentative title of Mexican Painters. The author always underlined the importance of the “artistic rebirth” of Mexico after 1910, considering it to be the “spearhead or bridgehead of modern visual art on the continent”. Furthermore, she suggested that this vanguard functioned as a new pole of attraction in addition to Europe which, up to that point, had dominated the structural logic of modern art: “Towards Mexico turn the gazes of those who have become accustomed to forgetting the route taken by Europe, begging its sensibility for new wellsprings and pathways.” Nelken always acknowledged the importance of muralism within this artistic rebirth; yet she preferred a different kind of painting, one that proposed a “magical realism, poetic entities and the subjugation of individualism over other canons and other social manifestations”. Artists such as María Izquierdo, Carlos Orozco Romero, Carlos Mérida, Raúl Anguiano, Rufino Tamayo and Manuel Rodríguez Lozano represent this line of exploration and offer “another way of thinking about the meanings of art”.
Her book was dedicated to these six artists. Nelken turned to their work with the aim of analysing the common features that, from her perspective, made the modern art of Mexico unique. In her own words: “At this hour, we say, in which Mexican painting turns to elaborating on its vernacular strata in all their rich diversity of nuances and the deep truth of their distinctive and immanent characteristics.” In the production of Carlos Orozco Romero this can be seen in relation to folk art. In his painting Dream (1940), a traditional Tlaquepaque piggy bank with a woman’s face gives form to an ethereal entity that appears to float over this landscape with metaphysical qualities. Meanwhile, she situated the non-figurative painting of Carlos Mérida in line with the ancient indigenous art of the continent. “To assume that abstraction in art is a contemporary innovation is to ignore a fact that becomes clear to everyone who considers the ancient visual production of the American continent. The anonymous pre-Colombians were masters in transposing the concrete to the abstract.” The work of María Izquierdo served to draw attention to their self-made quality and the vitality this endowed on the image. Writing of works like Orchids (1944) or Shelves (1947), the author remarked on “the ingenuity of the compositions, in the grouping of motifs”, concluding that: “There is nothing Stilleben about these studies: everything vibrates, yells and imposes itself:”
This book project from 1949 was never concluded; probably as a result of the influence of the muralists Rivera and Siqueiros, who had been excluded. Fortunately, Nelken did succeed in publishing monographs on almost all of the six artists. The author also retained in her archive numerous essays – some published, others not, some in Spanish and some in French – about several modern and historical painters, including Hermenegildo Bustos, Julio Castellanos and Guillermo Meza.