Abstract composition with a head and bird-like form, from the portfolio 'Motivos'

Carlos Mérida Mexican
Publisher Ediciones Arte Mexicano (EAM), Mexico City

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 692

Mérida was part of the Mexican muralist movement in the 1920s and one of the first artists to fuse European modernism with Latin American themes. This print (from a portfolio of three) is directly inspired by aphorisms in The Prince (1532), a political treatise written by the Italian author Niccolò Machiavelli for the education of new princes. Mérida’s prints imaginatively blend abstract and figurative elements in dreamlike compositions that reveal the artist’s long-standing interest in Surrealism.





Mérida formó parte del movimiento mexicano de muralistas en la década de 1920 y fue uno de los primeros artistas que fusionaron el arte moderno europeo con temas latinoamericanos. Este grabado, incluidos en un porfolio de tres, están inspirados en aforismos de El príncipe (1532), un tratado político escrito por el autor italiano Nicolás Maquiavelo para la educación de los nuevos príncipes. En los grabados, Mérida combina imaginativamente elementos abstractos y figurativos en composiciones oníricas que revelan su dilatado interés por el surrealismo.

Abstract composition with a head and bird-like form, from the portfolio 'Motivos', Carlos Mérida (Guatemalan, Guatemala City 1891–1984 Mexico City), Colour woodcut in purple

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