Exhibition at Cenart celebrates Alberto Híjar, “conspirator with official State registration”

The Marxist theorist and art critic Alberto Híjar boasted of being a “conspirator with official State registration” during a tour of the exhibition in tribute to his 90 years, in which he has made great contributions in the social and cultural sphere.

The exhibition Alberto Híjar 90: Art, struggle and resistance, Housed in the Espacio Alternativo gallery of the National Arts Center (Cenart) until February 15, it shows what the activist described as “the emotional networks that have to do with memory and history.”

In view of press clippings where she appears alongside Fritz Glockner and some of her companions who formed the leadership of the Armed Forces of National Liberation, there is a document that describes the investigation into the crime of conspiracy. He boasted: “it is a source of pride; I should have it hanging here.”

While walking through the exhibition, Híjar (Mexico City, 1935) opened his memory to recount those high moments of popular dignity converted into art through different disciplines, his time in an armed leftist organization, his arrest and his participation in many moments in which he promoted cultural projects.

With a clear and strong voice, he commented on anecdotes and invoked humor despite some tremendous events he included, such as the time on February 14 when the police captured him and he disappeared for a time. He listed wonderful characters in the arts. He recounted the details of many pieces that make up the set.

Alfredo Gurza González said that the exhibition organized by the National Center for Research, Documentation and Information of Plastic Arts that he directs celebrates “the teacher’s long career as a trainer of human beings, an activist very committed to all the best causes of the people and the main philosopher and art critic of our country.”

He explained that it is about showing “the networks that it has established over the years, the collective issues and initiatives that it has promoted and the emotional networks with artists, thinkers and ordinary people.”

Alberto Híjar, who wore a button with the legend: “Stop genocide. Free Palestine,” said that the exhibition shows “a set of references to the artistic groups that we built in the mid-20th century and their resonances in a School of History and Art Criticism that we founded, for example, and in traveling exhibitions, such as America in the spotlight, which was wonderful when we founded the Mexican Front of Cultural Workers Groups.

“Everyone was there and it didn’t matter to go to Ávandaro, the famous rock festival that ended in a mega mess, as it should have, and the proclamation: ‘Karl Marx, man of the millennium’, nothing more accurate, which we reasoned with a special guest of luxury: Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez.”

In another area, he explained during the tour, there is internationalism, which “includes the same adhesion to movements in Mexico such as Ayotzinapa and rural normalism, such as the activities in Nicaragua.”

The exhibition includes a representation by the artist Arturo García Bustos of the popular trial of one of the survivors who tried to invade Cuba to hand it over again to the United States, and the piece freedom of expression, with an endearing dedication from its author, Adolfo Mexiac.

Híjar described some intervened shoes, “historical. We turned them into traces of memory with a text on the soles to show the importance of our opposition to the criminal Miguel Nazar Haro and to judge Eduardo Ferrer McGregor, who locked us all in prison and did not kill us because we did not give him time.”

There is a cut of The Day about Gary Prado, a general who kidnapped and mistreated Ernesto Guevara, and who “was responsible for dragging him, wounded in the leg, to murder him in the little school in La Higuera.

There is Architecture Workshop 6, since, the art critic commented, “I was no stranger to the self-government and co-government projects in Architecture, in the Faculty of Philosophy, where it did not prosper, and in the school of Anthropology, where we revolutionized the study plans and gave birth to social anthropology with a group to which Victoria Novelo, Ricardo Loewe, José Lameiras and Brigite Boehm belonged.”

David Alfaro Siqueiros is present, “a fundamental figure then and later to put together this entire movement of repudiation of tyrannies and repressions.”

Later, the Marxist theorist referred to the Spanish republican fighter Antonio Pujol, the young and beloved graphic artist Lucía Vidales, Melecio Galván and Pablo O’Higgins, of whom a sketch for a painting he never made is exhibited. “The famous Man of the 20th century, which brought him many problems. The Communist Party ended up expelling him with everything and recording it.”

The relationship of works and artists continued with creations by the Colombian Pablo Agudelo; the “agitator, aggressive and rude Adolfo Quinteros”, with whom Híjar had “a close brotherly relationship”, and “Rini Templeton, our exemplary sister”, in addition to the muralist Rina Lazo, who gave him a copy of one of Bonampak”.

There is Fanny Rabel, whom the activist called “wonderful, older sister of all of us”; the cartoonist and cultural activist Felipe Ehrenberg and his “amazing capacity for creative association”, to arrive at the one addressed by the Living art course.

That project had “very extensive programs. The same with guided tours, as well as activities such as what happened in the year. Everything else is very varied, from the discussion of Althusser’s philosophy”, which they promoted to “not only discuss the problems of realism, but everything that had to do with the concept of ideology and what it implied.”

He concluded simply: “we didn’t do it wrong. We continue doing these things there.”