Carlos Mérida was a Guatemalan artist who was one of the first to fuse European modern painting to Latin American themes, especially those related to Guatemala and Mexico. He was part of the Mexican muralism movement in subject matter but less so in style, favoring a non-figurative and later geometric style rather than a figurative, narrative style. Mérida is best known for canvas and mural work, the latter including elements such as glass and ceramic mosaic on major constructions in the 1950s and 1960s. One of his major works, 4000m2 on the Benito Juarez housing complex, was completely destroyed with the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, but a monument to it exists at another complex in the south of the city.
Carlos Mérida was born Carlos Santiago Ortega in Guatemala City to Serapio Santiago Mérida and Guadalupe Ortega Barnoya. He later changed his name what is known by as he thought it was more sonorous. His brothers and children also took the Mérida name later on. He was of mixed Spanish/Maya-Quiché heritage which he promoted during his life.
As a young child, Mérida had both music and art lessons, and his first passion was music, which led to piano lessons.
From 1907 to 1909, the family went to live in the small town of Almolonga in the Quetzaltenango Department of Guatemala, where they were from. Here he continued music and art lessons.
At age 15, a malformation of his ear caused him to lose part of his hearing, so his father steered him towards painting. He felt “defeated” by music but found art to be an acceptable substitute. After he completed middle school and the family returned to Guatemala City, he entered a trade school called the Instituto de Artes y Oficios, then the Instituto de Ciencias y Letras. Here he began to have a reputation for the avant garde.
In 1919, he married Dalila Gálvez, with whom he had two daughters, Alma and Ana. She was from a wealthy family and understood Mérida’s aspirations although her parents had reservations about the marriage. She died ten years before him in 1974.
Merída’s first trip to the United States was in 1917, where he met writer Juan José Tablada. Mérida made several trips to Europe over his lifetime to both study art and work as an artist and diplomat. His early trips in the 1920s and 1930s put him in touch with both avant garde movements in Europe as well as noted Latin American artists, especially those from Mexico. His last trip was in 1950s.
In 1963, he donated canvases, graphic pieces and mural sketches to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Mérida was one of a number of artists such as Diego Rivera and Gerardo Murillo who became committed to promoting the handcrafts and folk art of Mexico and Central America, with a particular interest in those of Guatemala, often featuring Mayan textiles or elements in their decoration in his artwork. He died in Mexico City at the age of 94 on December 21, 1985.
Mérida’s art career began when he was still a teenager. His family’s move back to Guatemala City put him in touch with various artists and intellectuals. At age nineteen, he approached Catalan artist and writer Jaime Sabartés, who helped Mérida organize his first individual exhibition at the offices of the El Economista newspaper in Guatemala City in 1910.
As there was little opportunity for artists in Guatemala, in 1910, Mérida traveled to Paris with a friend named Carlos Valenti on a German cargo ship. From then until 1914, he lived and worked in Paris and traveled much of Europe. This put him in touch with European avant garde artists such as Van Dagen, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian as well as Latin American artists studying in Europe such as Diego Rivera, Jorge Enciso, Ángel Zárraga and Dr. Atl. He exhibited his work in venues such as the Independent Salon and the Giroux Gallery in Paris. For unknown reasons, his traveling companion committed suicide in his studio, which affected Mérida deeply and temporarily losing interest in art. He was helped in overcoming this by Roberto Montenegro.
In 1914, Mérida returned to Guatemala and saw his country in a different light, becoming fascinated in the folklore that before was common to him and felt the need to explore his “American” or New World identity. He began painting works with local and indigenous themes. His second exhibition in Guatemala was at the Rosenthal Building in 1915, an exhibition which marks the beginning of modern painting in Guatemala. His time with Mexican artists in Europe prompted him to go to Mexico in 1919, when the fighting from the Mexican Revolution had ended but there was still disorder. He arrived to the country a year before Diego Rivera returned from Europe.
Mérida is noted for both easel and mural works. His first exhibition in Mexico was in 1920 at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. In that same year, he exhibited in the United States at the Hispanic Society of New York. He participated in a collective show called the Independent Artists Exhibition in New York in 1922 and exhibited individually at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in Guatemala and the Valentin Dudesing Gallery in New York in 1926. In the 1930s and 1940s, the reputation of Mexican painting was rising; however, Mérida still needed to work to get his paintings sold. One reason for this was that his work differed from that of the Mexican muralists and was often not well received by critics. Mérida has forty five exhibitions in the United States and eighteen in Mexico from 1928 to 1948. These included an exhibition with Rufino Tamayo at the Art Center of New York (1930), the John Becker and Valentine galleries in New York (1930), the Club de Escritores de México and the Galería Posada in Mexico City (1931), the Stedhal Gallery and the Stanley Rose Gallery in Los Angeles, the East West Gallery in San Francisco, the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Georgette Passedoit and Cuchnitz galleries in New York (1939-1940) as well as the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1940 in Mexico City. He worked intensely in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s producing designs, graphic works, scenographic sketches for dance, and tapestries, playing with geometric variants. Other venues for his exhibitions included Harvard University, the Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California in Berkeley, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1954 he exhibited at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas.

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