French Daniel Hourdé presents his work for the first time in Mexico

Cadaveric sculptures that force one to look in the mirror of death and paintings with scenes of the crucifixion await the visit of the viewer in Daniel Hourde in Mexico, exhibition at the Museum of the Chancellery. During the opening, the French artist celebrated the extraordinary opportunity to show his work for the first time in our country, because he observes correlations between pre-Columbian and post-Conquest Mexican art: There are similarities between the themes, such as the expression of vanity and its transgression of death.

Some twenty sculptures, drawings, paintings and decorative objects make up this exhibition installed in the Viceregal building of the Historic Center, a few blocks from the tzompantlis with skulls from the Templo Mayor. Paris-Tenochtitlanwas added to the title of the exhibition that links France and Mexico with the fascination for the representation of death.

Art helps life. Long live Mexico!exclaimed the sculptor and cartoonist in a speech that he made an effort to deliver in Spanish during the inauguration ceremony led Wednesday night by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón and the French ambassador, Jean-Pierre Asvazadourian.

The Secretary of Foreign Affairs declared that this contemporary work of French art has essential symbolic civilizational ties with Mexico that finally build the vigor and depth of the relationship between peoples. Culture is not only not a luxury, but it is an essential dimension of relations between peoples. I would say that any foreign policy without culture is not.

Ebrard Casaubón pointed out that the Foreign Ministry is making an effort to exchange art with France and other countries in a cultural dialogue, which is above all hope about the future of humanity. He highlighted the interest, on a rainy afternoon, in crossing the city to go to the appointment with Daniel Hourdé; The official was accompanied by Alejandro Alday, director of the Matías Romero Institute; the curator Aldo Flores; Arturo Aguilar, who managed the project, and Pablo Raphael de la Madrid, representing the Federal Ministry of Culture.

dream universe

Asvazadourian highlighted that the exhibition allows us to celebrate a dreamlike universe in which his bronze and steel sculptures stand out with surprising details and realism, each one being proof of a technical feat offered to the public’s eyes. He pointed out that the themes reflect a sensitivity particularly connected to Mexican culture by sharing the fascination for the representation of death, aesthetic nuance peculiar to the culture of this country since pre-Hispanic times. They express something universal about our condition.

A skeletal bronze boat installed at the entrance of the old convent dedicated to San Felipe Neri invites you to enter the imaginary of the French artist, like Dante who crossed with Virgil by the river that separates the limits between the world of the living and the dead. The work makes one think of the Frenchman Auguste Rodin and the Mexican surrealist Leonora Carrington.

The diabolical art of shaping our shadows This is the first description that appears on the official website of the artist, who was born in Boulogne Billancourt in 1947. He attended the opening of the exhibition dressed in a unique red and blue striped suit and thick white-rimmed glasses.

Daniel Hourdé in Mexico: Paris-Tenochtitlan It is divided into three nuclei. We share the same obsession with deathdeclared the author of the pieces, as Dominique Legrand explained in the text that introduces the visitor to the first room, where he is received with a monumental sculpture of a redeemer who seems to offer his crown, as well as images of the way of the cross, with Christ in convulsive movements or exacerbated contortions.

In the second room, skulls hold a mirror, as an invitation to vanity or to understand that it is the reflection that every human will achieve, skeletons at the service of beauty.

In the third room, on the upper floor, charcoal paintings were placed with figures with Mannerist traits. The drawing has a lot of poise, security, graphic intensity; we are moved by the pain it expresses and also by its almost ecstatic paintings.

Realism, mannerism and the vanitas artistic genre highlight the emptiness of life and the relevance of death with worldly pleasures, elements that are essential in his work, in which he shapes the body and soul of his characters, even Guided by ridicule or irony, the Foreign Ministry highlighted Hourdé’s exhibition, who studied painting and drawing at the School of Fine Arts in Grenoble and Paris.

The exhibition of Daniel Hourdé, an emblematic French artist, will be on display at the Foreign Ministry Museum, located at República de El Salvador 47, until October 31. Free entrance.