Pintura y escultura parte 2

Painting and sculpture – PART 2

In 1951 Margarita Nelken published Contemporary Mexican Sculpture, a volume that examines the work of six sculptors: Ignacio Asúnsolo, Francisco Zúñiga, Luis Ortiz Monasterio, Germán Cueto, Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt and Geles Cabrera. As occurred with her project on painting, Nelken turned to the output of these artists to identify constants in modern sculpture. However, she refers to a key difference in relation to the former. “That painting, today, is the manifestation par excellence of the Mexican artistic instinct, no one disputes; yet it would be no strange thing if, within a few years – not many – sculpture should manifest itself, in Mexico, as even more authentically national than painting, because its sources are more specifically idiosyncratic.” For Nelken, the originality of Mexico’s modern sculpture arises “when it links directly with the pre-Cortesian, over and above the colonial”. In this way, the author recognizes, to a certain extent, the anti-colonial attitude of the historical avant-garde that emerged in Mexico. The original sculpture of the continent was a repository of multiple solutions and forms that, from the present, can be interpreted as figurative or abstract, realistic or geometric.

Tree of Life and of Death (ca. 1961-1962) by Ortiz Monasterio may be linked to references from the past thanks to its volcanic stone materiality, its volume that might recall classic pre-Colombian sculptures such as the Coatlicue, as well as its imagery that brings to mind folk art. Germán Cueto exemplified the type of modern artist who updates the cultural legacy without shunning international dialogue with other avant-garde movements. Mask no. 507 and Mask no. 557 date from his European period (1926-1932), when he was involved in the activities of the Cercle et Carré collective. At this time, he innovated his practice and production of these objects. Nevertheless, Cueto already had considerable experience in Mexico in the creation of modern masks, as well as participating in a post-revolutionary cultural sphere that was reassessing them from diverse perspectives.