UNAM organizes academic days in honor of Ida Rodríguez Prampolini

Various academic and cultural institutions will commemorate the birth centenary of the historian and researcher Ida Rodríguez Prampolini, who died in 2017. The anniversary falls on September 24.

Member of the Institute of Aesthetic Research (IIE) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) since 1957, this institution organizes the academic day on January 22 Mexican muralism in Latin America, proposed as a “continuation and update of Rodríguez Prampolini’s project, Muralism, a product of the Mexican Revolution, in America, that so many books and research have been bequeathed to us since the 90s of the last century,” says Luis Vargas Santiago, academic secretary of the IIE.

The academic cycle has the purpose of debating the presence and impact of Mexican artists in other latitudes of the American continent. The methodological proposals and advances that a group of researchers have developed since 2023 will be presented in a seminar titled the same as this day.

On the eve of the centenary, the IIE made a profit last year and for the third time Surrealism and fantastic art of Mexico, one of the books iconic by the academic, with a foreword by Elia Espinosa, within the Clásicos del Instituto editorial series, notes Vargas Santiago. Close to Ida’s birth we will hold a bibliographic exhibition-tribute at the Justino Fernández Library, as well as a panel to remember her legacy, in conjunction with the Academy of Arts, of which she was a prominent memberhe adds.

In addition, materials will be generated for social networks and a program with Tv UNAM is contemplated, in the context of the 90 years of the founding of the IIE, to be celebrated on February 20. On that day in 1935, the art historian and academic Manuel Toussaint y Ritter presented the constitutive acts of the Art Laboratory, the first collegiate act of the current institute, with the slogan: The history of our plastic arts is yet to be made.

Vargas Santiago notes: “from 2023, I was able to resume the project Mexican wall painting, which Ida led for the Brussels-based Union Académique Internationale. As it was one of the first projects of this organization – of which the IIE is a member – on American soil, there was great interest in not losing it.”

For the philosopher Christian Goeritz Álvarez, grandson of Ida Rodríguez Prampolini, his grandmother was not only one of the main voices of art criticism in Mexico in the third quarter of the 20th century, distinguished professor at the UNAM and introducer of the problems related to the understanding of contemporary European art in an environment still monopolized by muralism. It was a prolific writer, committed social activist, head of the family and, above all, in her words, a very lucky woman.

Social activity

Born in the port of Veracruz, Rodríguez Prampolini moved to Mexico City, where she entered the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM and obtained a bachelor’s degree in literature, then a master’s degree in universal history and a doctorate in literature with a specialty in history. He continued his studies in Spain, Quebec and Italy, among other places. He never forgot his home state.

In Ida Rodriguez Prampolini (2019), a book that brings together a series of texts by the researcher, Goeritz Álvarez refers to her social activity that results when she decides to “abandon a purely academic life, after her experience in 1968, a period in which she confirmed that life university was not a real opposition to the injustices and problems that, after the fateful October 2, not only had not found a solution, but even seemed to increase dramatically.

This perspective led her to join a small project to improve a poor and remote community: Tlayacapan, in Morelos.. This was the first of many that he would undertake in a much more determined tone in his commitment to concrete transformation of society. The time had come to radicalize more than ever that principle that he appropriated in his youth: art and culture are the most decisive means of transformation that we have to not only be better, but also to try to be better..

With this vision, after retiring from teaching at UNAM, he founded the Veracruzano Institute of Culture – now the Ministry of Culture –, trying to ensure that his home state enjoyed a popular organization dedicated to transmitting to those interested, especially the humble , the love for artistic and humanistic manifestations.

This was followed by the Veracruzano Popular Art Council, an organization dedicated to promoting the textile, pottery and jewelry productions of indigenous communities.

It turns out that Ida Rodríguez’s parents, belonging to for their work and position to the so-called middle classwrites Goeritz Álvarez, they instilled in their children “a deep love and sympathy for the needy of the old black neighborhood of La Huaca, whom their father – he was a doctor – cared for free, receiving payments from them sometimes in kind, which They represented a much deeper sacrifice for this sector in relation to its other patients.

Ida and her siblings grew up seeing deep kindness and gratitude towards their family in these people, so they always felt the urge to give back as much as possible. The first support she received from this humble population of the port were the large donations that led her to be queen of the Veracruz carnival. in 1946.