Carlos Merida

Biografía

Drawing inspiration from his Maya and Zapotec heritage, painter Carlos Mérida blended Pre-Columbian motifs with Surrealist and Cubist elements influenced by European Modernism. Music was Mérida’s first passion, but he took up painting after experiencing hearing loss. From 1910–14 he lived in Paris, where he met leading avant-garde artists including Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Amadeo Modigliani. He moved to Mexico in 1919, where he became active among Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo, working as Rivera’s assistant on his murals for the Simón Bolivár Amphitheatre. Returning to Europe in the late 1920s, Mérida shifted away from figuration, instead developing an abstract style inspired by Paul Klee and Joan Miró as well as Mayan geometric forms. Mérida later became interested in the integration of art and architecture. At over 4,000 square meters, his mural for the Benito Juárez housing project was then the world’s largest, although the majority of the work was destroyed in a 1985 earthquake.