Carlos Mérida was born in Guatemala City in 1891 and was one of the first artists to fuse European Modernism with a Latin American regionalism, moving Indigenous culture to the centre of visual culture. Mérida’s painting Motivo Guatemalteco (1919) is part of a body of work that attempts to capture the essence of Indigenous people and Maya culture. Mixing painting styles from European Modernism with symbols and elements of folk art from the Americas, Mérida portrays a Maya Quiché woman posing proudly with the traditional clothes representative of her community. While the woman might be from the highlands of Quetzaltenango in Guatemala – where Mérida grew up – he made this painting in 1919, the year he moved definitively to Mexico City. The geometric and colourful traces highlight the details of her sash, headband, and huipil. Their patterns and colours symbolise the worldview of her culture, representing the natural elements that form the origins of the world. This painting guides the viewer’s attention to the textile details and so portrays an understanding of craft instead of the exoticisation of women bodies.
—Eva Posas
