Carlos Mérida

Carlos Mérida ( born December 2, 1891 in Guatemala City, † 22 December 1984 in Mexico City ) was a Guatemalan - Mexican painter, lithographer and well-known representative of the Muralism.

Biography

Merida's parents came from Quetzaltenango, where he also grew up first. 1909 the family moved to Guatemala City, where he finished secondary school and studied music. This study because he had a disease-related hearing loss adjust and turned to the performing arts through a study at the Instituto de Artes y Artesanias to. He learned, among others, the writer and the painter Carlos Jaime Sabartés Valenti know. With the latter, he went to Paris in 1910, where he also made the acquaintance of Pablo Picasso. In Europe, befriended Valenti shot. Mérida himself returned in 1914 back to Guatemala, where he exhibited for the first time. In 1919 he married Delilah Gálvez against the wishes of her family, what was the reason for emigrating to Mexico. In Mexico he studied with Mexican mural painting. Beginning of the 1920s, he worked with Diego Rivera on the murals of the " Bolívar " amphitheater of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. As Amado de la Cueva, Ramón Alva Guadarrama, Xavier Guerrero, Fernando Leal, José Revueltas and Germán Cueto he belonged, which was founded by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros Unión de Trabajadores Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores. With the theme " Little Red Riding Hood and the Four Elements" was built in 1923 his first mural at the Children's Library of the Secretaría de Educación Pública. When he again went from 1927 to 1929 to Paris, he met Paul Klee and Joan Miró know. After his return he became art director of the gallery at the Teatro Nacional de México. Influenced by the artists he painted henceforth mainly figurenlos. He later used repeatedly indigenous bark Wood Paper In his paintings themselves. In 1940 he participated in the exhibition of international Surrealists in Mexico. From 1942 he taught at North Texas State Teachers College in Denton, from which today's University of North Texas emerged. In the late 1940s he explored other art forms; arisen as a result of murals and glass mosaic images with constructivist influence, including in his native Guatemala. His love for music remained Mérida despite his hearing impairment life connected and participated in the founding of the dance school of Secretaría de Educación Pública, whose director he was. In Guatemala City, the modern art museum bearing his name as an additive.

Other well-known works (selection)

• Mural at the " Benito Juarez - " Building, Mexico City ( 1952)
• Mural at the Alianza Insurance Building, Mexico City ( 1953)
• Mural on the city hall of Guatemala City (1956 )