We have been following the trail of the grand art of the Mexican Muralists around Mexico City. Our hunt began at San Carlos Academy, where almost every Mexican artist received his training. It stands at the corner of Academy Street and Moneda, Coin Street, so named because the mint of New Spain was located there, just behind the National Palace, off the Zócalo in Centro Histórico.
Aztec Temple to Bishop's Palace to Treasury to Art Museum
On Moneda Street, halfway between the Zócalo and San Carlos. across from the Mint (now the National Museum of Cultures), stands another of those grand Spanish colonial palaces, the former Palace of the Archbishop. Its construction was begun in the 16th century, on top of the ruins of the Aztec temple to the god, Tezcatlipoca, a god of night, the underworld and warriors. The Palace reached its present form in the Baroque period of the 18th century.
In the 1860s it was expropriated by the Reform government of Benito Juárez and made into offices for the Secretariat of Hacienda, the Treasury. In the 1950s it was converted into the Museum of the Secretariat of Hacienda. The Treasury obtained its collection via in-kind payments for taxes owed. Over the latter half of the last century, it became a Mexican tradition for artists to donate works instead of paying cash.
We originally visited the Musuem to see the mural, Song to the Heroes, by José Gordillo, one of what we call the Reverberations of the Mexican Revolution, art inspired by the Revolution that is scattered around the city.
The Un-Muralist
While there, we explored the exhibits and were surprised and delighted to come across another of the city's hidden gems. They aren't murals, but small paintings by an artist we had never heard of, Antonio Ruiz. No more than 18" by 24", in their own manner and voice, they tell us of the post-Revolutionary era of the second quarter of the 20th century in Mexico City. While the Big Three, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, tended to disdain easel painting as art for the rich, Ruiz explicitly chose to work in small, very focused oil paintings.
Aztec Temple to Bishop's Palace to Treasury to Art Museum
On Moneda Street, halfway between the Zócalo and San Carlos. across from the Mint (now the National Museum of Cultures), stands another of those grand Spanish colonial palaces, the former Palace of the Archbishop. Its construction was begun in the 16th century, on top of the ruins of the Aztec temple to the god, Tezcatlipoca, a god of night, the underworld and warriors. The Palace reached its present form in the Baroque period of the 18th century.
In the 1860s it was expropriated by the Reform government of Benito Juárez and made into offices for the Secretariat of Hacienda, the Treasury. In the 1950s it was converted into the Museum of the Secretariat of Hacienda. The Treasury obtained its collection via in-kind payments for taxes owed. Over the latter half of the last century, it became a Mexican tradition for artists to donate works instead of paying cash.
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| Former Palace of the Archbishop, now Museum of the Secretariat of Hacienda, the Treasury. Towers of the Cathedral in the background |
We originally visited the Musuem to see the mural, Song to the Heroes, by José Gordillo, one of what we call the Reverberations of the Mexican Revolution, art inspired by the Revolution that is scattered around the city.
The Un-Muralist
While there, we explored the exhibits and were surprised and delighted to come across another of the city's hidden gems. They aren't murals, but small paintings by an artist we had never heard of, Antonio Ruiz. No more than 18" by 24", in their own manner and voice, they tell us of the post-Revolutionary era of the second quarter of the 20th century in Mexico City. While the Big Three, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, tended to disdain easel painting as art for the rich, Ruiz explicitly chose to work in small, very focused oil paintings.
Born in 1892 in Texcoco, State of México, adjacent to Mexico City, in 1914 Ruiz entered the Academy of San Carlos in the midst of the Revolution (1910-1920). But unlike his fellow student, Siqueiros, he did not become a revolutionary. After his art training, he worked in the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation and as a primary school art teacher. He spent two years, 1925 to 27, in Hollywood, working as a set designer, which was a skill he continued to use throughout his life in Mexico, designing stage sets for Mexican plays and ballets. Early on, he adopted the very Mexican apodo, nickname, “Cocito”, "Little Corzo", because he looked like a Spanish toreador, “El Corzo”.
Ruiz taught at the Institute of
Bellas Artes and the Academy of San Carlos. In 1942 he became director of the Escuela
Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado aka "La Esmeralda", the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving, known as "La Esmeralda" from the street on which it was located. He died in 1964 of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Ordinary People in a Time of Change
Ordinary People in a Time of Change
Through a focus on ordinary people and their daily lives in Mexico City, Ruiz communicates the post-Revolutionary transition from, and conflicts between, a more internally focused, traditional Mexican culture to one seeking to join the modernity of the larger world. Working slowly, seeking to communicate through details, he did not produce many works. The Flemish masters were his models.
About a dozen of his works are in the Museum of the Hacienda, in their own small gallery on the second floor. They are portraits, not just of individuals, but of an epoch. To us, they say as much about that time as the murals of the Big Three, but in a softer voice.
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| The Miners (Compare with Rivera's Entrance to the Mine) |
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| School Independence Day Parade Father Miguel Hidalgo is portrayed on the banner. Parades like this are still held every September 16, all across Mexico |
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| The Milkman's Girl Friend Milkmen no longer go door to door in the city, but plenty of other vendors still do, often with bicycles and baskets. Romance, of course, is eternal. |
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| The Serenade Nowadays, one would hire a Mariachi Band. |
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| Opening of the Pulquería, Pulque bar. Beer has pretty much replaced pulque, a beer made from juice of the agave, now used to distill mezcal and tequila. |
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| The Shoppers Polanco, Fifth Avenue or your local mall. |
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| Summer This is our favorite. Make the bathing suits skimpier and it could be today. Peasant couples still appear occasionally on the streets of Mexico City. The number 8 is pure Art Deco. |
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| The Paranoids We would love to know what Ruiz had in mind. These characters could be from New York |
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| Self-portrait The "turkey" envisions himself as a peacock or an even more fantastic bird. Such a sense of self-deprecating humor! We think Orozco would get it; Rivera and Siqueiros, probably not. |
To us, Ruiz's art has the same focus as that expressed by another observer of the details of la cotidianidad, everyday life, in Mexico City some 350 years earlier, Bernardo de Balbuena, who painted what he saw with words in his poem, La grandeza mexicana, that is, the grandeza of ordinary people:
Of various looks and various movements
various figures, faces and demeanors,
various men with various thoughts...
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