Mexico City’s Moment

By: Edward M. Gomez

February 2007

Informed by overlapping layers of history—ancient civilizations, Spanish conquest and the

Casa Lamm Cultural Center, in the Colonia Roma Norte district.

shaping of a modern nation—Mexico City has long been an important cultural center for Latin America. Now, building on the strengths of world-class arts institutions and the allure of its unique history and setting, the Mexican capital is staking its claim as an international cultural center, too. For art collectors, it offers opportunities for unexpected discoveries set against a backdrop of richly blended indigenous, European and North American styles.

With a population of more than 20 million, the capital is a high-altitude megalopolis whose central zones were developed based on principles of European urbanism. Visitors tend to focus on these districts, where hotels, museums, markets and historic sites are concentrated. Among them are the Centro Histórico, or downtown historic center, which was built on the ruins of an Aztec city; the Zona Rosa; Colonia Roma; Colonia Condesa; and Colonia Polanco.

Most galleries are located in the latter three neighborhoods, and several important museums are situated in Chapultepec Park, just south of Polanco. They include the Museo de Arte Moderno (Museum of Modern Art), a repository of Mexican modernism (with works by Frida Kahlo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, Carlos Mérida and Francisco Toledo) and the internationally oriented Rufino Tamayo Museum. Also in the park is the renowned National Museum of Anthropology, whose vast collections document the rise and fall of the Mayans, the Olmecs and the Aztecs.

To gain a chronological sense of the scope and diversity of Mexico’s visual arts history, start with a visit to the anthropology museum to see such treasures as an Aztec carved-stone calendar; the Olmecs’ giant, stone heads from the jungles of Tabasco and Veracruz; and Mayan face masks made of jade. Before visiting the modern art museum right across the avenue that bisects the park, head north to Polanco for lunch at master chef Patricia Quintana’s Izote restaurant on Presidente Masaryk, the chic district’s main thoroughfare.

Quintana, a famed creator of nueva cocina Mexicana (new Mexican cuisine), literally wrote the book (Mulli: the Book of Moles) on one of Mexico’s exquisite national dishes: mole (pronounced “MO-leh”). The curry sauce of Mexico, mole is made with peppers, nuts, spices and a dash of unsweetened chocolate, and is normally served on chicken. Quintana offers a duck version, as well as tamales filled with huitlacoche, Mexico’s own black-corn truffle.

In Polanco, Praxis Arte Internacional showcases the work of young Mexican artists, like Hugo Lugo’s witty paintings of men in business suits wrestling with giant Life Savers and photographer Graciela Fuentes’ hallucinatory images of rivers. “Some of the most interesting work is being made by artists like these from beyond the capital region,” says Praxis director Alfredo Ginocchio.

Nearby, dealer Ubaldo Kramer’s KBK Arte Contemporáneo, a gallery in one of Mexico City’s classically modernist buildings, shows the work of Mexicans and other Latin Americans. Kramer’s artists include fellow Argentine Esteban Pastorino Diaz, who makes mysterious, black-and-white photographs of Art Deco-era buildings in Argentina’s provinces, and Guatemalan Darío Escobar, whose baseball bats sheathed in ornately decorated silver evoke the over-the-top style of the Spanish-colonial baroque.
The trajectory of Mexican visual-art developments continues at the National Art Museum in the

Ricardo Pinto, "Deliva-Nature," 2006, mixed media on canvas, at Santiago Toca Art.

Centro Histórico, next to the elegant Central Post Office. Collections on view at the renovated museum, with its state-of-the-art galleries and intimate viewing rooms for drawings and prints, cover the period from the Spanish-colonial era to the mid-20th century. For works created after that time and for Mexican modernism in depth, head back to the Museum of Modern Art in Chapultepec Park.

To the west of the Centro, the side-by-side Roma and Condesa districts are filled with Art Deco, Art Nouveau and early modernist architectural gems. Many contemporary-art galleries are located there, including Garash Galería, Nina Menocal and OMR (which, over the years, has showcased conceptual art and also new art from Cuba.). Nearby, Casa Lamm, a cultural center in a renovated old mansion, offers exhibition spaces, a bookstore and a glass-enclosed restaurant set down like a giant cube in one corner of a lush, enclosed garden.

Around the corner, dealer Gerardo Traeger of Traeger & Pinto offers a wide range of art forms, from drawings and contemporary photographs to motorized, kinetic sculpture. “We’re eclectic and try to keep our exhibition schedule open and flexible to accommodate unexpected finds,” Traeger says as he examines abstract paintings on canvas mounted on board by Ernesto Jay Goebel. Even within this Mexican artist’s body of work, three different stylistic strains are visible, and that’s just the way this dealer likes it.

A block from Casa Lamm, private dealer Santiago Toca welcomes collectors to his viewing space, located in a white birthday cake of a building on a palm-filled plaza. Toca observes, “Although there has been a trend here toward conceptual art in recent years, I’m interested in artists—especially painters—whose work is rooted in modernism, abstraction and figuration.” Toca represents the Oaxaca-based painter Ricardo Pinto and, from Spain’s Catalonia region, Jordi Boldó. Both are abstractionists known for creating works with texture-rich surfaces. Also in the neighborhood, Galería El Estudio offers affordable works by emerging artists, as well as prints and drawings by the 89-year-old, British-born Leonora Carrington, a legendary figure of the Mexican Surrealism movement.

Many of these dealers take part in México Arte Contemporáneo (MACO), an international fair that takes place in Mexico City during the last week of April. This year, the fifth annual MACO will feature dealers from Mexico, the U.S. and Europe. The fair offers a unique opportunity to examine the work of emerging and already established Mexican and Latin-American artists in a broader, international context. The fair and the numerous events related to it have become a locus for the talents and energies of Mexico City’s overlapping worlds of art, publishing, fashion and media. If anyone has any doubt that the Mexican capital’s moment has arrived on the global contemporary-art scene, MACO emphatically dispels it. Its message to art-minded travelers and collectors alike is clear: ¡Viva México!

Art critic Edward M. Gomez, an Art & Antiques New York correspondent, resides part-time in Mexico City.
MEXICO CITY MUSTS

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►México Arte Contemporáneo MACO 2007

A sacred stone receptacle in the shape of a jaguar, "Cuauhxicalli," late post-Classic period, at the National Museum of Anthropology.

April 25–29, 2007
Expo Reforma, Avenida Morelos 67, Colonia Juárez
www.macomexico.com

►Museo Nacional de Arte (National Art Museum)
Calle Tacuba 8, Centro Histórico
52.55.5130.3400
www.munal.com.mx

►Museo de Arte Moderno (Museum of Modern Art)
Paseo de la Reforma y Gandhi, Bosque de Chapultepec
52.55.5553.8331 or 52.55.5211.7827

►Izote
Presidente Masaryk 513, Colonia Polanco
52.55.5280.1671 or 52.55.5280.1265

►Praxis Arte Internacional
Arquímedes 175, Colonia Polanco
52.55.5254.8813
www.praxismexico.com

►KBK Arte Contemporáneo
Petrarca 239, Colonia Polanco
52.55.5250.7147
www.kbkart.com

►Traeger & Pinto
Colima 179, Colonia Roma Norte
52.55.5525.4500
traeger_pinto@yahoo.com.mx

►Santiago Toca Art Consulting
Plaza Luis Cabrera 10, Suite 1, Colonia Roma Norte
52.55.5264.3691
santiagotoca@gmail.com