Carlos Mérida

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Guatemalan artist Carlos Mérida is best known for creating Modernist abstract art that integrated Latin American culture with 20^th-century European painting. Born in 1891 in Guatemala City, Guatemala, Mérida was of Spanish and Kʼicheʼ Maya heritage, which would later become a significant influence in his work. He studied music as a child but, after experiencing hearing loss, began to study painting instead.

In 1910, at the age of 19, Mérida presented work in his first art exhibition. That same year, he moved to Paris, where he lived for four years and met and worked with Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Amedeo Modigliani, as well as several prominent Latin American artists residing in Europe at that time.

In 1919, Mérida returned to Latin America and lived in Mexico as the Mexican Revolution drew to an end. There, he worked with Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo.

In the decades that followed, Mérida expanded his practice to include graphic works, sketches, tapestries, and stage sets and costumes for dance performances. He died in 1984 in Mexico City at the age of 93.

Mérida’s extensive and varied body of work fused aspects of Surrealism, Muralism, Cubism, and European Modernism with elements of pre-Columbian Mayan culture. He was known for integrating figurative elements into his abstract art, such as colorful organic and geometric representations of clusters of people, and employed a variety of media, including watercolor, oil, gouache and pencil, and parchment and plastic. He was the recipient of several prestigious awards, namely the Order of the Quetzal (Guatemala’s highest order) and the Order of the Aztec Eagle (Mexico’s highest order given to foreigners). The collection of Phoenix Art Museum features seven of Mérida’s works ranging from the 1930s to the 1960s, including Juego de líneas (Line Game) (1964) and Abstract Composition (Composición abstracta) (1974).

Image credits: Florence Arquin. Carlos Merida, ca. 1950. Florence Arquin papers, 1923-1985. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; Carlos Mérida, Poma azul (The Blue Apple) (detail), 1962. Parchment and plastic. Gift of the Friends of Mexican Art. © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Carlos Mérida, Secuencia de danza no. 3 (Dance Sequence No. 3), 1949. Oil on canvas. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine. © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (Top) Carlos Mérida, Huichol 13 (detail), 1964. Watercolor, marble dust. Gift of Mr. Edward Jacobson. © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.