Carlos Merida, 1945 Mexican Modernist Silkscreen Serigraph Print Regional Folk Art Dress Mexico, 1945

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This listing is for the one Silkscreen serigraph piece listed here.
Mexico City, 1945. First edition. plate signed, limited edition … Read more This listing is for the one Silkscreen serigraph piece listed here.
Mexico City, 1945. First edition. plate signed, limited edition of 1000, these serigraph plates depict various types of traditional and folk art indigenous clothing and costume styles from around Mexico. The illustrations depict the cultures of many different states in Mexico, including Oaxaca, Chiapas, Jalisco and Veracruz.

Carlos Mérida (December 2, 1891 – December 21, 1985) was a Guatemalan artist who 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, favoring a non-figurative and later geometric style rather than a figurative, narrative style. Mérida is best known for canvas and mural work, the latter including elements such as glass and ceramic mosaic on major constructions in the 1950s and 1960s. One of his major works, on the Benito Juarez housing complex, was completely destroyed with the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, but a monument to it exists at another complex in the south of the city.
Carlos Mérida was born Carlos Santiago Ortega in Guatemala City to Serapio Santiago Mérida and Guadalupe Ortega Barnoya. He later changed his name what is known by as he thought it was more sonorous. His brothers and children also took the Mérida name later on. He was of mixed Spanish/Maya-Quiché heritage which he promoted during his life.
As a young child, Mérida had both music and art lessons, and his first passion was music, which led to piano lessons. He studied at 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.

Merída’s first trip to the United States was in 1917, where he met writer Juan José Tablada. Mérida made several trips to Europe over his lifetime to both study art and work as an artist and diplomat. 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.
In 1963, he donated canvases, graphic pieces and mural sketches to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico. Merida was one of a number of artists such as Diego Rivera and Gerardo Murillo who became committed to promoting the handcrafts and folk art of Mexico and Central America, with a particular interest in those of Guatemala, often featuring Mayan textiles or elements in their decoration in his artwork. He died in Mexico City at the age of 94 on December 21, 1985.


As there was little opportunity for artists in Guatemala, in 1910, Mérida 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.


Mérida 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 (1930), the John Becker and Valentine galleries in New York (1930), the Club de Escritores de México and the Galería Posada in Mexico City (1931), the Stendhal 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 (1939-1940) as well as the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1940 in Mexico City. 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.

Mérida’s early monumental work was related to Mexican muralism, one reason he relocated to Mexico at the end of the Mexican Revolution. There he joined a group called the Renacimiento Mexicano (Mexican Renaissance) and then worked with Diego Rivera as an assistant at the Bolivar Amphitheater (San Ildefonso College) along with Jean Charlot, Amado de la Cueva, and Xavier Guerrero.
In addition to painting on canvas and glass mosaic murals, Mérida 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 Sokolow, Waldeen, Gloria Contreras, Evelia Beristain, Rosa Rayna and his own daughter Ana Mérida. This interest in dance led him to design stage set and costumes for twenty two works from 1940 to 1979.
His early work is marked by experimentation. He was in Europe when the avant garde was transitioning from Impressionism to Cubism and he was influenced by the works of Modigliani and Picasso. His surrealist phase again came from time in Europe, meeting not only Paul Klee and Joan Miró but also fellow Guatemalan Luis Cardoza y Aragón. Luis Cardoza y Aragon called him a pioneer of Latin American art, painting elements such as indigenous people, Mexican and Central American landscapes without oversentimenalizing which had not been done before. This emphasis on the New World not only was expressed with folkloric images, especially in his early work, but also in his later work. The discovery of Bonampak motivated him deeply, taking new ideas from the ruins and eventually led to his interest in integrating painting and sculpture into architecture. See less