Los músicos (The Musicians), from the portfolio Images de Guatemala (Images of Guatemala),

1927

In the 1920s and 1930s artists like Mérida, Charlot, and Covarrubias sought to create a modern art based on the Indigenous aesthetics of Mexico and Central America. Each artist also undertook scholarly studies of Indigenous art: Charlot served as a draftsman for an archaeological expedition at Chichén Itzá; Mérida received government support to study Indigenous cultures of Mexico; and Covarrubias, whose set design for a Mexica-inspired ballet is shown here, wrote and illustrated the multivolume Indian Art of the Americas. Charlot’s Cuautitlán was published in Design magazine in an illustration of various Mexica (also known as Aztec) glyphs. A caption explained that the emphasis on angularity in the glyphs, “link[ed] their art to our modern cubistic aesthetics.” Though Charlot and Mérida claimed Maya heritage and Covarrubias was Mexican, their perspectives on art and ethnography were often Eurocentric.