La Jornada: Museum of Fine Arts will review the muralist facet of Roberto Montenegro

The artist Roberto Montenegro (1887-1968) is known for his roles as a painter, lithographer, illustrator, set designer and author, and is considered the first to join the muralist movement, since in 1921 he painted the first work of that genre in modern Mexico, The tree of life, in the apse of what was the temple of the former Colegio Máximo de San Pedro y San Pablo, now the Museum of the Constitutions, in the Historic Center.

The Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts (MPBA) will review this perhaps little remembered and valued aspect of Jalisco’s extensive production. The exhibition Roberto Montenegro: Muralism outside the norm, which will open to the public on Wednesday, will do a “rereading” of the work of the 1967 National Arts Prize winner as a “pioneer” of this discipline in Mexico and an avant-garde artist who integrated symbolism, art deco and the aesthetics of popular arts, another of his great passions. The venue presented the exhibition in 2018 Roberto Montenegro: Expressions of Mexican popular art.

A hundred works, mostly paintings, but also some watercolors and lithographs, will make up the exhibition curated by Daniel Garza Usabiaga. For the first time, three fragments of the mural Reconstruction (1931-1933), from Montenegro, will be exhibited independently: Rural teacher, Portrait of Eisenstein y Disarmament. The three panels he made for the Banco de Comercio will be included, which are preserved in the Museum of the City of Irapuato.

The current exhibition will reflect the breadth of the artist’s work, evidencing his interest in modernism, symbology and architecture. By touring the rooms, it will be possible to appreciate the transformation of his artistic practice, from the monumentality of the mural, through a humanist posture reflected in anti-fascist, anti-war or pacifist images, to the impact that his work had on the construction of a diverse Mexican modernity far removed from single official discourses.

The tree of life It was not his first mural. Moved to Spain to continue his training as a painter, at the beginning of the First World War, in 1914, he took refuge in the port of Pollensa, Mallorca. There he made his first mural, Allegory of the Balearic Islands, in the Círculo Mallorquín, in 1919, the year in which he also returned to Mexico.

He soon came into contact with José Vasconcelos, then rector of the now National Autonomous University of Mexico, who, upon being appointed Secretary of Public Education in the government of Álvaro Obregón, commissioned him to decorate the interior of the temple of the former Jesuit school of San Pedro and San Pablo, with ornamental motifs and tiles throughout the nave. In the apse he painted fresco The tree of life, which alludes to the origin and destiny of man, executed in the decorative spirit of the Art Nouveau that Montenegro had known in Europe. It was not a political issue.

A gentleman for San Sebastián

Julieta Ortiz Gaitán writes: “he soon joined the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), as a drawing teacher and with the appointment of ‘decorator’ of that body. In close collaboration with Vasconcelos he carried out the best of his mural work in the four years of the Vasconcelos administration, from 1921 to 1924.” For researcher Laura González Matute, in 1921 Vasconcelos “was still not very clear about what he wanted beyond painting walls.”

Originally, Montenegro took as the central figure of the mural The tree of life an image of San Sebastián, which was ordered to be erased after two years on instructions from the Presidency, indicated Esperanza Balderas, a specialist in the work of Montenegro. He was replaced by a man in black armor. One of the muses who are next to the central character holds a bow with an arrow that points towards a San Sebastian that is no longer there.

In 1922, Montenegro began the fresco mural The festival of the Holy Cross in the nave of the stairs of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, a work that was completed the following year, as well as the execution of Zodiac in the vault. Invited to paint in the offices of the head of the SEP, he executed the murals in encaustic and oil paint. The island of the West y Hindustani studies, The rural family, Allegory of the indigenous world –disappeared in 1989– and allegorical friezes with Masonic symbols.

More murals followed: one frescoed for the Ibero-American Library, located in the former church of La Encarnación (1924); The tale of Aladdin y Characters of the story in the library of the Benito Juárez School Center (1925); The angel of peace o allegory of the wind –later moved to the Palace of Fine Arts–, and Machinism (disappeared) in the East Cloister of the former school of San Pedro and San Pablo (1926); In addition, he made the bas-reliefs for the dressing rooms of the Coronel Lindberg open-air theater in Parque México (1927).

In Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in 1928 he executed The new day, frescoed mural with characters in the typical style of Tehuantepec, Jalisco and Guerrero. Its current location is unknown. The following year he moved to Tepecuacuilco, Guerrero, to paint the mural in an elementary school. Search the earth for your food. It was not until 1931-1933 that he completed the murals on the staircase of San Pedro and San Pablo, in which Hermilo Jiménez collaborated.

He also created murals for individuals, as demonstrated by the work done in 1932 for the restaurant bar L’Escargot, by Manolo del Valle. A year later, in the offices of the Southern Pacific railroad company, he created three murals on stretchers: Sonora, Sinaloa y Nayarit.

In 1947, Montenegro resumed its mural activity by starting a project of 20 panels in the Montenegro Bar “for ladies”, in the now defunct Hotel del Prado. He Frido Guillermo Monroy collaborated on his invoice. He finished them in 1948.

Apparently his last pictorial mural project consisted of the murals that he painted on frames, in 1950, for the Bank of Commerce of Mexico City, with the themes: industry, commerce and work. Currently, they are in the City Museum in Irapuato. For the pediment of the Degollado Theater, in Guadalajara, he designed the allegory Apollo and the muses made of glass mosaic.