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A pair of monumental (26-foot) stucco panels have been discovered at the important classic Maya site of El Mirador in the Peten by a team led by Richard Hansen of Idaho State University. The figures in the panels appear to represent the heros twins of the Maya creation myth.

This is clearly an important find. The panels can be dated to the Late Preclassic period, from about 300 BCE to a little after the beginning of the common era.

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Video via MSNBC

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A new discovery at El Mirador

Wilfredo Lam (1902-19982) was an influential modernist Cuban painter. Among those who acknowledge his influence is the contemporary painter Carlos Luna. While Luna was born in Cuba, his work “deals in part with the duality of Cuban and Mexican heritage,” according to the Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) in Long Beach, where a show of the artists’ work is being presented through the end of August. Luna’s work, like Lam’s, is rich in historical and cultural symbolism.

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Above: Wifredo Lam, Untitled, ca. 1947, oil on canvas 49 x 59 ¼ in.
Below: Carlos Luna, El Gran Mambo, 2006, oil on canvas, 144 x 192 in.

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Wilfredo Lam and Carlos Luna

This photo of a table top painted with images of colorful fruit, taken in a crafts shop in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Mexico, is from Lucy Nieto’s photostream.

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Photo Wednesday: Painted table top

Juan Soriano (1920-2006) was born in Guadalajara, son of veterans of the Mexican revolution. Something of a prodigy, he developed his distinctive style after moving to Mexico City when he was fifteen.

According to the exhibition label for this painting (The Dead Girl, 1938, oil on panel, 18 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches (47 x 80 cm), Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Clifford, 1947, 1947-29-3),

Soriano painted this 1938 work shortly after seeing a Veracruz household whose front window displayed a dead child dressed like an angel, notifying the neighbors of the baby’s passing. Postmortem images of children were common in Mexican painting (and, later, photography) beginning in the colonial era. While this tradition originally developed in Renaissance Europe, it had a particular importance in Latin America. Mexican modernists Frida Kahlo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Julio Castellanos also created famous examples of this theme.

John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (1852) makes an interesting contrast. Both figures are surrounded by flowers, but the flowers in Soriano’s picture only point up the starkness of the figure by their contrast; Millais’ Ophelia seems to be drifting into a flowery world — she holds flowers in her hand and even her dress echoes floral patterns. Millais’ Ophelia holds her hands open to her fate; Soriano’s girl clinches her hands together. In her madness Ophelia stares vacantly skyward; the eyes of Soriano’s girl are pressed tightly shut. The difference reflect the styles of the moment, but they also suggest something of the artists’ temperaments. Soriano’s world is one in which the very edges of the canvas seem to press in on the image with a suffocating force.

Fragile Demon: Juan Soriano in Mexico, 1935-1950 collects 16 early works by the artist. It runs through Sunday.

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Juan Soriano at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Arte is offering what looks like a strong show of Mexican printmaking from 1920-1950. The full title is México y la Estampa Moderna, 1920-1950: Una Revolución en las Artes Gráficas. Included are works by Diego Rivera, Clemente Orozco, Leopoldo Méndez, and many less familiar artists. Click the image above for a video preview on the museum’s website. The exhibition runs through June 8.

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via Jim Johnston

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Mexico and the modern print

But Mexico still holds the distinction for one of the most spectacular art heists. In 1985 thieves made off with 140 objects from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. To my knowledge, this is the largest number of objects ever stolen from a museum.

The theft occurred on Christmas day. There were eight guards on duty, but they don’t seem to have been very vigilant. And the museum’s alarm system had been broken for the past three years.

The objects — Maya, Aztec, Zapotec, and Miztec ceramics mainly — were small, but extremely valuable. One of them alone (a monkey-shaped vase) was valued at $20 million.

I never heard whether any of the objects was recovered.

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Heist

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Scratchboard Maximon

Arte Maya Tz’utuhil is a one-man business of Joe Johnston, based in San Francisco. Its website is www.artemaya.com. Johnson travels to Guatemala once or twice a year to acquire paintings — mainly from artists in the Lake Atitlan area — for representation for sale. The website offers a wide range of painting (and calendars), from relatively inexpensive pieces to more substantial works, such as this large oil painting.

Shown is Recorriendo Camino al Mercado (Traversing the Road to the Market) by Mario Gonzalez Chavajay, 2003, oil on canvas, 36 x 56 in.

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Guatemalan paintings from Arte Maya Tz’utuhil

El Curandero Gallery, located in La Antigua, Guatemala, looks like a good source for Guatemalan masks, wooden figures, slingshots, ceramics, paintings, and textiles. Among their current listings are these two Maximon masks. The one on the left dates from the 1950s and the other from the 1940s.

Maximon is an auspicious folk deity best known from his cult at Santiago Atitlan. He apparently blends aspects of the Christian Saint Simon with a Mayan god, perhaps Maam, an underworld god. I photographed a Maximon altar in Antigua a few years ago, and posted information about Maximon on that page.

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Maximon masks

Working Gringos has put together the best list of museums in Merida that I have seen. They include

• Yucatan Museum of Popular Art (Museo de Arte Popular de Yucatan)
• Galeria Merida
• The Yucatan Music Museum (Museo de La Canción)
• Olimpo
• Governor’s Palace (Palacio del Govierno)
• MACAY (Museo de Contemporaneo Ateneo de Yucatan)
• Merida City Museum (Museo de La Ciudad)
• City Museum of Merida Yucatan – Upstairs Gallery
• Galería at the University Cultural Center (UADY)
• Yucatan Painting Gallery (Pinocateca del Estado de Yucatan)
• Jose Peon Contreras Gallery
• Gallery in La’Kech
• Art on the Street
• Galería Manolo Rivero
• Centro de Artes Visuales
• La Quilla
• La Luz Galeria
• La Casa de los Artistas
• El Dragón Sabio (The Wise Dragon)
• Anthropology Museum
• Casa Museo Montes Molina
• Galeria Tataya
• Georgia’s House
• Casa Catherwood
• Centro Cultural Ricardo Lopez Mendez
• Habemus Gallery

I took the picture above at the MACAY in February.

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Museums in Merida