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Lot Essay
Born in Guatemala City, Carlos Mérida grew up in Quetzaltenango as his family hailed from the ancient Mayan city known as the "dwelling place of the quetzal." The city acquired its Nahuatl name from the sixteenth-century Spanish invaders and their Mexica allies who spoke Nahuatl rather than the K'iche' language of the Mayans. Surrounded by mountains and volcanos, this fertile landscape is still referred to as the "capital of the Mayans" and is rich in abundant crops such as coffee, wheat, maize and a variety of vegetables that have provided a prosperous economy for its inhabitants. While figurative, this painting reveals some of the modernist traits that Mérida was exposed to during his stay in Europe from 1910 to 1914. Most notably, the artist's interpretation of Cubism is evident in the use of geometric forms to describe the small houses and hilly terrain as well as in the use of an "outline" created by the narrow space between planes or sections that map out the entire composition.
Mérida cherished and was inspired by the land and history of his ancestors and the artist's modernist oeuvre is rooted in his deep affection for his countrymen. The artist spent his youth in Quetzaltenango but left for the capital after completing his secondary school studies to begin his artistic training in the Instituto de Artes y Oficios. There, he established friendships with artists Carlos Valenti and Jaime Sabartés, a friend of Picasso, who was instrumental in organizing the artist's first exhibition and encouraged him to travel to Europe where he met Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Diego Rivera, Ángel Zárraga and other members of the Parisian avant-garde. In the French capital he became interested in the development of abstraction and other forms of modernism.
With the outbreak of World War I, Mérida returned to Guatemala where he was influential in the advancement of an Indigenist movement in the arts. This painting dates to the artist's departure from his homeland in 1919 when intrigued by the Mexican post-revolutionary muralist project, he moved permanently to Mexico becoming a part of that cultural and artistic milieu until the end of his life.
Margarita Aguilar, Doctoral Candidate, The Graduate Center, New York
Mérida cherished and was inspired by the land and history of his ancestors and the artist's modernist oeuvre is rooted in his deep affection for his countrymen. The artist spent his youth in Quetzaltenango but left for the capital after completing his secondary school studies to begin his artistic training in the Instituto de Artes y Oficios. There, he established friendships with artists Carlos Valenti and Jaime Sabartés, a friend of Picasso, who was instrumental in organizing the artist's first exhibition and encouraged him to travel to Europe where he met Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Diego Rivera, Ángel Zárraga and other members of the Parisian avant-garde. In the French capital he became interested in the development of abstraction and other forms of modernism.
With the outbreak of World War I, Mérida returned to Guatemala where he was influential in the advancement of an Indigenist movement in the arts. This painting dates to the artist's departure from his homeland in 1919 when intrigued by the Mexican post-revolutionary muralist project, he moved permanently to Mexico becoming a part of that cultural and artistic milieu until the end of his life.
Margarita Aguilar, Doctoral Candidate, The Graduate Center, New York