‘ODERN Mexico un- AVG eewerr for a to period a dull nation in the arts. Thi proved tobe ripe enough social upheavals and poli cal changes, while in the reall m of art the cast-iron methods of academic ing still prevailed. In spite of the fact that Mexico had two inspirational sources in art, the indigenous and the Iberian, the Academy confined it activities to mannetism in subject. pattern and technique. So it lived on into modern times— that is to say since Mexico separated from Spain Before the separation it had at least one reason for existing—to supply with religious paintings ‘the numberless churches of the country and with , sance danuaty 1923 MEXICAN Piste xy TO. DAY After a long academic sleep, the old Aztec art has inspired a national Renais- JOSE JUAN TABLADA* portraits the members of by Klinger and Stucky painter Julio Ruel ated the era of modern art in Mexico. sketches disclose a. vivid imagination . While still very young s. He then pro- in Karlsruhe and Munich His ear he painted mural d ceeded to Germany Patt dt taweany ios = s two sixty-sevenattained through a few years of patient learning the meturity of talent, Returning to Mexico. he exe cuted several orders for portraits and military paintings, and then an event came about which did much to influ- ence his carcer. “Revista Moderna,” a magazine of literature and the arts, as founded and the art director- ship was given to Ruelas. It was an two risty-sight ears of the past century, and one fh brought about forthe Mexi- ies a official tenchers had failed to evoke. A. prolific illustrator of azine, Ruelas was com- pelled to express himself in black white, very seldom resorting spalette. “This eircumstance as not detrimental; on the eon- y it was beneficial to. the +. His paintings, worked to ¢ most careful detail, disclosed marvelous knowledge of tone He was a poet in black c, not in pigment. His ngs were poetry by senti- of design, by the meaning ary conception, at the me time disquieting and tor= ng bya sort of objece realism recalling Goya, Valder Leal and certain other Spanish masters. Nature was his source of” inspiration, but, interpreting it sith & whimsical fancy, he ined a peculiar original- ity, going through a mo- rose gamut from a gloomy sarcasm to the most agon- izing expression. One of his famous works was the drawing of a man i tal anguish pierced by an anchor che Christian symbol of Hope and se- “wexican cin.” sy curity. Another was a SATURNIND HERBS sketch depicting a desert planted with numberless gallows and shaken by earthquake which made hanging corpses swing and frightfully clash together. Modern girls abdveted by satyrs; mediaeval knights enamoured of mermaids; nocturnal trains assuming in the dark the uncertain aspect of both a Chinese dragon and a giant diplodocus; trees opening bestial eyes in the nodes of their trunks and twisting branches like human limbs; ghosts, ap- paritions and sprites were the dramatis per- sonae of his weird realm. The mood of this peculiar artist was by no means either fictitious or illegitimate, Ruelas was an Indian and thus the truculence of his subtle works may be traced to sueeieay paves” tHe ancestral spirit of the ay saraninonennas oldest Mexican sculptors, JANUARY 1923‘ommL wer FAN" ‘any bel to have discovered the BY ROBENTO MONTENEGRO blue Mesicaa night and the first to who were as skilful in the expression of terror as were the old Assyrians in the representation of animal str The spirit discern a treasure of color of Ruelas was often roused by the beauty of in the woman, and her form a: ace of movement tvoked thus in gloomy nightmare and dreadful b Je more banefully rmonies dormant sht fields. He d his erepuseular or nocturnal visions by of a palette of sombre grays suggesting ind air throu values. Most of his mbued with the melan- los of the Mexican high ardent thirty-six, Ruben Dario, can poet, who was at h , impress plateaus, sod the pangs of his distressing agony said: “Ruelas’ tropical districts, When Enciso chanced to paint death is like a Ruelas dr Lake Chapala by daylight, he found exquisite ter Ruelas, Jorge Enciso became a harmonies in pinkish saffron and coral with charm ed figure in medern Mexican art. Not- ing complementary violets and blues, not inferior of the to the mysterious emerald, profound sapphire ecorative and mystic turquoise he was wont to melt in the al landscapes. Through er Xavier Martinez, a haracter from t standing his occasional d some remarkable mainly to be considered as a atmosphere of his noc ove allothers, the Mexiean-born pe human figure a works, Eneiso landscape painter. It was he who, JANUARY 1923 two stalented disciple of Whistler, who later made abode in Cali cise felt the influence of ¢ great American master, but, having strong enough to withstand the dangerous wiardry of the poet of the “Nocturnes,” his eres tions display only a subt redalence as remote was the Japanese bias in W istler’s masterpieces. Enciso as a decorator was the first to conceive a thorough and really Mexican art derived from the ins genous monuments, archite ture, sculpture, painting and crafts of the different tribes who inhabited the Mexico of pre-Spanish times, many of them gifted with wondrous sentiment and skill. Bur Unfortunately the artis who had that clear vision did nothing, or very little, actually: to foster and unfold it This achievement was tobeaccomplished later by Best Maugard, with whose productions we shall deal later on, A close contempo- rary of Enciso is Ro- berto Montenegro, author of a portfolio of | twenty black and white drawings published in Paris which well deserved to be duced by the poet Henri de Regai These drawings were noteworthy for their imagin- ative faney and literary touch, enhanced by both & decorative sense and a technical skill which echibited a certain Beardsley influence, This influence was strong among the young artists of the beginning of the century: they were readers of Baudelaire and De Goncourt. The Mexicans, like the Russians, have an innatelove of