Carlos Merida was a Guatemalan and Mexican artist who was known primarily as a muralist and printmaker. He was one of the first to fuse European modern painting to Latin American themes, especially those related to Guatemala and Mexico. He was part of the Mexican muralism movement in subject matter but less so in style, favouring a non-figurative and later geometric style rather than a figurative, narrative style.
Background
Ethnicity:
He was of mixed Spanish and Maya-K'iche' heritage which he promoted during his life.
Carlos Merida (born Carlos Santiago Ortega) was born on December 2, 1891 in Guatemala City, Guatemala, to Serapio Santiago Merida and Guadalupe Ortega Barnoya. He later changed his name what is known by as he thought it was more sonorous. His brothers also took the Merida name later on. He was of mixed Spanish and Maya-K'iche' heritage which he promoted during his life.
From 1907 to 1909, the family went to live in the small town of Almolonga in the Quetzaltenango Department of Guatemala.
Education
As a young child, Merida had both music and art lessons, and his first passion was music, which led to piano lessons. From 1907 to 1909 he attended music and art lessons in the small town of Almolonga in the Quetzaltenango Department of Guatemala.
At age 15, a malformation of his ear caused him to lose part of his hearing, so his father steered him towards painting. He felt “defeated” by music but found art to be an acceptable substitute.
After he completed middle school and the family returned to Guatemala City, he entered a trade school called the Instituto de Artes y Oficios, then the Instituto de Ciencias y Letras. Here he began to have a reputation for the avant garde.
Career
Merida’s art career began when he was still a teenager. His family’s move back to Guatemala City put him in touch with various artists and intellectuals. At the age of nineteen, he approached Catalan artist and writer Jaime Sabartés, who helped Merida organize his first individual exhibition at the offices of the El Economista newspaper in Guatemala City in 1910.
As there was little opportunity for artists in Guatemala, in 1910, Merida traveled to Paris with a friend named Carlos Valenti on a German cargo ship. From then until 1914, he lived and worked in Paris and traveled much of Europe. This put him in touch with European avant garde artists such as Van Dagen, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian as well as Latin American artists studying in Europe such as Diego Rivera, Jorge Enciso, Ángel Zárraga and Dr. Atl. He exhibited his work in venues such as the Independent Salon and the Giroux Gallery in Paris. For unknown reasons, his traveling companion committed suicide in his studio, which affected Merida deeply and temporarily losing interest in art. He was helped in overcoming this by Roberto Montenegro.
In 1914, Merida returned to Guatemala and saw his country in a different light, becoming fascinated in the folklore that before was common to him and felt the need to explore his “American” or New World identity. He began painting works with local and indigenous themes. His second exhibition in Guatemala was at the Rosenthal Building in 1915, an exhibition which marks the beginning of modern painting in Guatemala.
Merida’s first trip to the United States was in 1917, where he met writer Juan Jose Tablada. Merida made several trips to Europe over his lifetime to both study art and work as an artist and diplomat.
His time with Mexican artists in Europe prompted him to go to Mexico in 1919, when the fighting from the Mexican Revolution had ended but there was still disorder. Besides, his early trips in the 1920s and 1930s put him in touch with both avant garde movements in Europe as well as noted Latin American artists, especially those from Mexico. His last trip was in 1950s.
Merida was noted for both easel and mural works. His 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. He participated in a collective show called the Independent Artists Exhibition in New York in 1922 and exhibited individually at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in Guatemala and the Valentin Dudesing Gallery in New York in 1926. In the 1930s and 1940s, the reputation of Mexican painting was rising; however, Merida still needed to work to get his paintings sold. Merida has forty five exhibitions in the United States and eighteen in Mexico from 1928 to 1948. These included an exhibition with Rufino Tamayo at the Art Center of New York in 1930, the John Becker and Valentine galleries in New York in 1930, the Club de Escritores de Mexico and the Galería Posada in Mexico City in 1931, the Stedhal Gallery and the Stanley Rose Gallery in Los Angeles, the East West Gallery in San Francisco, the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Georgette Passedoit and Cuchnitz galleries in New York in 1939-1940 as well as the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1940 in Mexico City. In addition, in 1942 he was invited to teach fresco painting at the North Texas State Teacher’s College in Denton, today the University of North Texas.
He worked intensely in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s producing designs, graphic works, scenographic sketches for dance, and tapestries, playing with geometric variants. Other venues for his exhibitions included Harvard University, the Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California in Berkeley, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1954 he exhibited at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas.
In addition to canvas and murals, Merida also worked in education. In 1932, he founded the dance school of the Secretariat of Public Education with Carlos Orozco Romero and invited the participation of other artists such as Agustín Lazo, Leopoldo Méndez, Silvestre Revueltas and Blas Galindo. He ran the school for three years working with dancers such as Gloria and Nellie Campobello, Graciela Arriaga, Anna Sololow and his own daughter Ana Merida, among others. For Merida dance was a way to express what painting and music could not. This interest in dance led him to design stage set and costumes for twenty two works from 1940 to 1979.
Carlos Merida died on December 22, 1984 in Mexico City, Mexico.
He was a member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.
Personality
Music and dance were Merida's lifelong interests and they influenced his paintings with rhythmic, poetic and lyrical pieces. He was particularly interested in indigenous dance, documenting 162 of them, some completely pre-Hispanic.
Interests
Music, dance
Connections
In 1919, Carlos Merida married Dalila Gálvez, with whom he had two daughters, Alma and Ana.