The Ford Foundation declined the grant. But beyond its paternalism and its questionable assumptions about African art, Rubin’s letter reveals something more consequential. The phrase “airport art” was not Rubin’s invention; it was McEwen’s term, and one he had been actively cultivating through the 1960s as both a warning and a sales strategy—a way to stake the Workshop School, his own in-house training program and production, against a looming tourist market.² Rubin learned the label from McEwen, and he deployed it here exactly as intended: to rule that this work was not that. In doing so, Rubin did more than offer aesthetic approval. He effectively ratified the very distinction McEwen had been working to enforce in order to promote the output of his Rhodesian Workshop School.

That distinction soon became certified by Western institutions. In 1968, sculptures from McEwen’s workshop began their world tour when they were shipped to New York; classified at customs “for exhibition purposes”; and insured, warehoused, and circulated by MoMA for two years across American universities and museums under the title New African Art: The Central African Workshop School. They were exhibited—and they were sold by MoMA. Within a few years, Zimbabwean stone sculpture, often labeled “Shona sculpture,” had become one of the most visible and commercially successful contemporary art movement from the African continent in Europe and the United States.³

This essay argues that the difference between what came to be known as “airport art” and “Shona sculpture” was neither simply rhetorical nor aesthetic. It was a matter of infrastructural control. In Salisbury (now Harare), production, pricing, exhibition, and sales were initially concentrated in a single institutional hub—the National Gallery and its Workshop School. When that hub was extended through MoMA’s circulating exhibitions apparatus, the circuit widened without becoming decentralized. In this system, authenticity was not the opposite of hybridity; it was the language that secured it. Together, these terms stabilized both aesthetic and financial value across the full chain of making, circulation, and display.

The Salisbury Hub: Concentrating Production, Distribution, and Display

Rubin repeats McEwen’s phrase as if it were already common sense. That is exactly the point. By the mid-1960s, “airport art” had moved from Salisbury into international discourse, in many ways thanks to Frank McEwen’s efforts. In his writings on the National Gallery of Salisbury and its Workshop School, McEwen began defining a foil against which his project could take shape. By the time of the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar in 1966, the phrase had entered a broader discourse.⁴ What began as polemic was becoming a shared diagnostic for the state of contemporary African culture.⁵

McEwen’s own definition was deliberately provocative. “Tourist art trade,” he wrote, is governed by “a base commercialization [that] controls the mass production of thousands of shiny wooden pseudo-African images. Lathes, calipers, sanders, polishers help exploit this form of art prostitution that tourists support.”⁶ The rhetoric was accompanied by photographs: sculptures cramped together on small tables, lined up in repetitive rows, and thereby stripped of aura and individuality (figs. 2, 3). The imagery did as much work as the words. Airport art was congestion, mechanical repetition, excess supply.

For McEwen, the problem was not just that artists were “heavily exploited” by middlemen, the deeper danger was epistemic.⁷ Tourist demand, he argued, had begun to dictate supply and corrupt vision. Airport art described an entire infrastructure that allowed the market to speak too directly.

McEwen’s key move in 1963 was that he framed the Workshop School less as a romantic enclave and more as a local counter-infrastructure “to develop a whole cycle of effective art production and protection.”⁸ This cycle involved gatekeeping talent, standardizing materials, reinforcing the pedagogical myth of non-teaching, creating “an international market . . . on itinerant exhibitions,” and having a strict “sales policy.”⁹ Crucially, McEwen was not trying to eliminate the market; rather, he was trying to own the market interface (selection, narrative, and placement) so that tourist demand could not directly sculpt form and category. Under McEwen’s tutelage, production, exhibition, pricing, and distribution were brought under one institutional roof, functioning simultaneously as studio complex, exhibition venue, marketing apparatus, and gatekeeper.

Artists were initially invited to work in proximity to the museum or on its premises, but they were not independent entrepreneurs. The National Gallery took a percentage of sales—initially around 50 percent—and retained authority over pricing and selection.¹⁰ Those who did not meet the aesthetic and commercial expectations would lose access to studio space.¹¹ Whatever its self-proclaimed laissez-faire pedagogy of “teachers who do not teach,” the system was tightly managed.

The crucial difference between airport art and what McEwen promoted as Zimbabwean “Shona sculpture” thus lay in the control of commerce. In McEwen’s National Gallery, production was centralized, exhibition carefully staged, pricing disciplined, and distribution mediated through a single hub. Tourist demand could not directly address the artist, now shielded in “quarry-factories” like Vukutu hundreds of miles away from the site of display (fig. 4). The National Gallery did not reject the market, it filtered it.

MoMA as Transnational Extension

If Salisbury concentrated production, pricing, and exhibition under one roof, MoMA scaled that structure when the sculptures arrived in New York. Indeed, the Museum translated McEwen’s hub into an institutional system of customs classification, valuation, touring logistics, and controlled sales.

In February 1968, six crates weighing more than 3,100 pounds arrived in the United States. As one internal memo to Rubin put it, “[McEwen] has had over 300 sculptures shipped here from Rhodesia, mainly to get them out of the country.”¹² In fact, timing mattered: The shipment arrived just months before Rhodesian exports faced an intensified embargo due to its apartheid regime.¹³ To enable the import, MoMA’s staff did more than process paperwork. Through letters from Waldo Rasmussen (Director of the Department of Circulating Exhibitions) and William Rubin, the works were imported under tariff item number 765.2000 and 765.0300, allowing the Museum to pay as little as $55 import duty on freight that it had insured for over $50,000.

The reason for the tariff exemption is twofold: For one, Rasmussen made clear in his letter to the customs officials that the shipment was only for “for exhibition purposes.”¹⁴ On paper, they were loans. In practice, however, they were also inventory for sale. On the other hand, William Rubin’s letter to the customs officials added, somewhat laconically, “These [sculptures] are serious, and in most cases, very good works of art which should not be in the least confused with ‘ethnic’ craft objects of the type sometimes produced outside the centers of Western art.”¹⁵ Customs, in other words, did not merely facilitate border crossing, it contributed to the sharpening of aesthetic policing. The import process became a site where “serious art” was administratively distinguished from its contemporary others—whether labeled “ethnic” craft or dismissed as “airport art.”

From customs, the exhibition entered MoMA’s Circulating Exhibitions apparatus, where Rasmussen’s department created the tour package: a title, a brochure, press material, and sales documentation.¹⁶ The title—New African Art: The Central African Workshop School—was itself a strategic distortion. It redirected attention away from Southern Africa and Rhodesia, names increasingly associated in the US media with the violence of white minority rule, and toward a safer, generalized geography of “new” and “Central African.”

The brochure text had a double function here, producing individuality and collectivity at once. For one, it individuated the sculptors: Each artist is named (alphabetically), with a birth year and a place of work, alongside title and medium. These biographical coordinates establish them as authors in contrast to their “airport art” competitors. On another, the same brochure folds those authors back into a collective identity. McEwen’s heavily shortened text supplies a developmental narrative that converts these artists into a single “school.” They are cast as “deeply immersed” in folklore, ritual, and “magic” then mapped in a staged progression—from “adult-child art,” through “heavy primitivism” and a “pre-Columbian” phase, “before achieving personal sophistication.”¹⁷ Strongly reminiscent of narratives around Pablo Picasso’s creation of Cubism, the result is a familiar modernist story of maturation and refinement, one that renders stylistic change legible as individual aesthetic progress—while making “the Workshop School” appear as the shared engine behind the individual authors.

The brochure also standardizes formal looking, making sure that viewers will notice the same sculpture’s features. It identifies recurring elements—enlarged heads, frontal poses, vertical emphasis, “relaxed tension,” and integrated bases—while treating variation as local content (“spirit images”) within a shared visual grammar.¹⁸ The point was not only to describe the sculptures, but also to stabilize what would count as their defining qualities as the objects moved from venue to venue.

Where text and image reinforced that stabilization, pricing gave it teeth. The brochure circulated alongside a price list and other sales materials for prospective buyers (fig. 5), and the price schedule tracks the implicit hierarchy more closely than it does medium or scale. Most works cluster around roughly $350, suggesting a baseline “serious sculpture” price, while the upper tier appears reserved for artists positioned as more “advanced.”

Joram Mariga’s Universal Spirit (n.d.) sits at the top of the list at $811, consistent with his status in the literature as an early catalyst for stone carving.¹⁹ Next come Bernard Manyandure’s Traditional Dancing (n.d.), one of the largest works in the exhibition, and Vaisi (Vais) Chimange’s Frog-man Spirit (n.d.), both priced at $679 (fig. 6). Chimange is especially instructive: Born in Mozambique, only 24, and a recent entrant to stone carving, he complicated any simple equation of “sophistication” with age and made “Shona” a shaky explanatory anchor for the categories being built around the work. At the low end, Kitela’s Head ($275; fig. 7)—a medium-size brown steatite sculpture not dramatically smaller than Chimange’s and carved in the same material. Embodying neither the vertical emphasis nor relaxed tension, its price suggests that quality was assessed according to ranked authorship and McEwen’s formal criteria more than medium or dimensions.

Photographs for prospective buyers staged the works outdoors—including images implying MoMA’s sculpture garden, even though they were never exhibited there as if to suggest to install it outside after acquisition (fig. 8).²⁰ Similarly, the cover of the brochure depicts the sculptures placed on tree trunks, highlighting verticality in a setting that would have read to many viewers like it read to Rubin, namely as “the bush” (fig. 9). These choices did quiet work: They suggested origin, authenticity, and installability at the same time, while keeping the objects visually distinct from more commercial environments.

The exhibition traveled to eight venues across the United States, typically staying three to four weeks at each stop. University galleries and museums paid fees scaled to institutional status between $100 and $500 in addition to covering the shipping fees. Pedestals were fabricated. Sculptures were drilled for stability. Condition reports tracked chips and cracks; repairs were ordered; damage was evaluated against insured value. This was not incidental administration. It was the material infrastructure that allowed the works to circulate as “serious sculpture” within a curated circuit.

Throughout the tour, the works remained available for purchase. MoMA took a 10 percent commission on sales, with an additional $30 markup on objects requiring plinths.²¹ Administratively, the objects could be filed as loans. Functionally, they operated as managed inventory: curated, toured, and sold through institutional mediation. Demand did not speak directly to the sculptor but with the Department of Circulating Exhibitions; it was filtered through a system designed to buffer the feedback loops McEwen feared. The central hub in Salisbury was geographically displaced but structurally preserved.

In this mediation, MoMA assumed multiple roles simultaneously: It was customs broker, classifying the works to ensure favorable entry. It was insurer, establishing and revising monetary value. It was warehouse manager, responsible for storage and handling. It was touring coordinator, structuring the itinerary and institutional framing. It was commissioned seller. And above all, it was validator.

Press responses suggest the system worked as intended. Reviews repeatedly echoed the brochure’s language and interpretive frame: formal traits (enlarged head, verticality, “relaxed tension”) and claims of cultural isolation, folklore, and “ancient” heritage.²² In one instance, a local art history department chair even went on the record, lending his institutional authority to repeat the brochure almost verbatim.²³ Meaning traveled as reliably as the crates did.

Hybridity, Formal Coherence, and the Historiography of Stone Sculpture

Across the primary and secondary literature, stone sculpture is typically organized through two overlapping sets of divisions: institutional centers and origin stories. On the one hand, survey accounts map the movement onto parallel, if not competing, hubs—most commonly McEwen’s National Gallery/Workshop School lineage and the Tengenenge farm under Tom Blomefield. On the other hand, revisionist histories redivide the field genealogically: Instead of an ex nihilo “Shona” flowering, they trace stone carving to earlier mission-based pedagogies (Cyrene and Serima) and then to a dispersed first generation whose biographies cluster by region (Cyrene, Serima, Harare, Nyanga, Tengenenge).²⁴

My argument sits adjacent to (and slightly orthogonal to) the standard poles of the debate. Jonathan Leslie Zilberg’s influential formulation treats “Shona sculpture” as an engineered tradition, one shaped by McEwen’s intellectual templates and by intercultural traffic rather than ethnic continuity.²⁵ Later work complicates that account by reasserting artists’ agency and the thick reality of belief and training—whether through interview-based cultural contextualization and patronage analysis (Celia Winter-Irving and Elizabeth A. Morton), anthropological emphasis on identity-making and customary continuities (Joseph James Kinsella), or revisionist re-centering of African artist-teachers and system-level causality (Barnabas Muvhuti).²⁶ I add to this conversation a third term: “circulatory infrastructure as a generator of form.” Rather than adjudicating whether aesthetic form originates in indigenous “spirit” or modernist “invention,” I treat form as the repeatable outcome of touring, insurance, photography, installation standardization, and market buffering. What looks like “style” is also a set of solutions to photography, packing, customs, insurance, reinstallation, and sale—an aesthetic that crystallized under the economic discipline of circulation.

The features most frequently highlighted by McEwen and the press make this clear. Frontality is not only a compositional preference, it is also is a media strategy. A frontal figure reproduces cleanly in brochures and newspapers and remains legible at a glance—especially when reduced to black-and-white halftone. The claim that the stand is built into the sculpture similarly functions as both ontology and logistics: It renders the work self-sufficient while making it easy to install, reinstall, and stabilize across changing venues. Scale performs as portable monumentality—large enough to command a pedestal, compact enough to fit predictable crate dimensions and touring schedules. Material decisions—shifts toward harder serpentine and granite—also read differently when paired with documentation: Durability reduces loss and repair; the rarity of hard stone supports “anti-fake” branding; and a stable material profile simplifies valuation and insurance. McEwen’s much-emphasized polished surfaces became an interface between form and paperwork: Finish registers as quality in photographs and can be described, compared, and verified in condition reports. Verticality, often treated as purely expressive, can be understood as another touring form. Upright figures maximize presence while minimizing footprint: They store efficiently, stabilize easily on pedestals, and hold a crisp silhouette under varied lighting conditions.

The installation photograph from the West Virginia University Gallery iteration makes the infrastructural logic visible (fig. 10). The works are dispersed across pedestals and a curved platform, each isolated by dramatic lighting into a discrete, readable unit. Nothing relies on a complex environment or contextual explanation; each object is made to “hold” its own display conditions—self-supporting, immediately legible, and resistant to visual noise. Even the museum’s standardized tools (track lights, plinths, open sight lines) seem anticipated by the sculptures’ compact massing and restrained protrusions.

Seen as a whole, the story is less about stylistic evolution than it is about a value chain that continuously converts risk into form and form into value. McEwen’s Salisbury hub concentrated production, selection, pricing, and narrative; MoMA extended that hub transnationally by translating “seriousness” into customs categories, insurance schedules, touring contracts, installations, commission-based sales, and the press. “Shona sculpture” operated as a circuit in which authenticity rhetoric and modernist legibility worked together to make circulation profitable without appearing commercial. Once the chain was visible end to end, formal traits stopped reading as timeless cultural signatures and began to register as logistical achievements: frontality that photographs, integrated bases that reinstall, vertical silhouettes that pedestal and pack, hard stone and polish that insure and reproduce. This is not to cast Zimbabwean sculptors as passive outputs of a system, but to mark the conditions within which they made decisions—navigating, negotiating, and at times exploiting the constraints and opportunities of touring, documentation, and sale—as part of their artistic practice. As Bernard Takawira, who was only 20 years old at the time of the exhibition and would later become one of its most internationally successful participants, put it: “Sculpting is not a train station: It is the journey itself.”²⁷ Modern art here is not a look so much as a route—made in and through the conditions of circulation.

Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders for Figures 2 and 3 in this article. If you hold the rights to any of the material used and have not been contacted, please reach out to contact_c-map@moma.org so that proper credit can be attributed or the material removed.

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Morocco’s first fine arts school, L’Institut national des beaux-arts (The National Institute of Fine Arts; hereafter INBA), is located in Tetouan—a city in the northern region known as the Rif (fig. 1). The school was founded in 1946 by the Spanish colonial government as La Escuela preparatoria de bellas artes (The Preparatory School of Fine Arts; hereafter EPBA) and served as part of military dictator Francisco Franco’s mission to formulate a more positive image abroad after the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).¹ While fine arts courses were offered in primary schools during the French and Spanish protectorate era (1912–56), the EPBA, led by the Spanish painter Mariano Bertuchi Nieto (1884–1955), was the first of its kind to provide Moroccans with the opportunity to extensively study fine arts, obtain scholarships to study abroad, and envision a career as an artist or fine arts instructor (fig. 2).² To this day, Bertuchi is recognized by many Tetouanis as the “Spiritual Father” of “La Escuela Pictórica de Tetuán” (The Pictorial School of Tetouan) or “La Escuela de Tetuán” (The Tetouan School)—labels coined by Spanish art critics Carlos Antonio Areán González and Dora Bacaïcoa on the occasion of a group exhibition of Tetouani artists at the Ateneo de Madrid in 1967.³

In the 1950s, the best Moroccan students having completed their studies at the EPBA were awarded scholarships by the Spanish government to continue their education at institutions such as Madrid’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando or Seville’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Saint Isabel of Hungary.⁴ As in most of the formerly colonized world, the first group of artists studying in Europe—equipped with fine arts as a tool for building a “modern civilization”—returned home to their newly independent country to spearhead a “cultural renaissance.”⁵ In Spain, Franco maintained a conservative environment and retrograde cultural agenda throughout his dictatorial reign (1939–75).⁶ In higher education, he eliminated “decadent” influences, foreign emulation, Russophilia, effeminacy, and the dehumanization of art and literature, instead looking to Spain’s Golden Age, or the neoclassical eras of the 16th through 18th centuries, as models for the artistic values he encouraged.⁷ As a result, the environment in which Tetouan’s modern painters studied was a restrictive one in that all personal freedom of thinking and imagination had been eliminated.⁸ According to scholar Fernando Labrada Martín, individual creative pursuits were undertaken only after students had developed a sound academic foundation at one of the Spanish art academies.⁹ In addition to cultural conservatism, Franco promoted education in “practical and utilitarian fields” to prepare students for nation-building. As a result, Moroccan students also obtained teaching degrees and were, for the first time, equipped to professionalize themselves as instructors of fine arts.¹⁰

While the INBA’s contemporary artists have gained attention in the art market and the international exhibition circuit, the school’s modern period, which I designate as the 1950s through the 1970s, remains largely an enigma. Contemporary artists from Tetouan are therefore presented as if emerging from a void.¹¹ The Francophone hegemony of Morocco’s cultural discourse has centered Casablanca’s modern artists, while Tetouan’s cultural scene has been superficially discussed, sidelined, or absent altogether.¹² Artists such as Ahmed Amrani (b. 1942), Saâd Ben Cheffaj (b. 1939), and Meki Megara (1933–2009) not only trained at the colonial-era EPBA, but they also became instructors at the ENBA in the postindependence period. Mohamed Sarghini (1923–1991) would bypass the preparatory school to become the first Moroccan to enroll at a European art academy. He then returned to Tetouan to serve as the school’s first Moroccan director. Meriem Meziane (1930–2009) would also bypass the EPBA and become the first Moroccan woman to enroll at an art academy abroad. Though she never taught or studied at the Tetouan art school, her trailblazing career as a woman artist is important to Tetouan’s art history.¹³ Their work, among that of many others, shows that Moroccan modern art is multifaceted—both within a Tetouani context and on a national scale. In their personal practices, they experimented with a diversity of formal styles, thereby breaking away from the conservatism for which the Tetouan art school was known.

After Morocco’s independence in 1956, Spanish instructors and students gradually departed the school, and Sarghini began his tenure as director—a post he held until 1986. To consolidate the institution into the larger national project, King Mohammed V re-inaugurated the EPBA as L’Ecole nationale des beaux-arts (The National School of Fine Arts; hereafter ENBA) in 1957 (fig. 3). The immediate postindependence period has been described as a time of “Moroccanization” or “valorization of Moroccan identity,” with the end goal of creating a “purely” Moroccan school through the appointment of a Moroccan director and enrollment of a Moroccan student body.¹⁴ Unlike at Casablanca’s art school, where Farid Belkahia (1934–2014) became director in 1962 and led his peers through a pedagogical overhaul, the ENBA maintained an approach to fine arts inherited from Spain. I argue that there are many reasons for the ENBA’s slow shift away from the metropole of Madrid. Tetouan, and the greater Rif region, was disenfranchised by the central Moroccan government in the years immediately after independence—leaving it politically, socially, and culturally disconnected. One response to this subjugation is the Rif Revolts of 1958, which shaped the conditions under which the institution evolved.¹⁵

Despite this turmoil, the decades following independence in Morocco were a time of openness and study in search of emancipation due to the atmosphere of cultural and patriotic movement.¹⁶ It was a moment of renewed energy and creativity, with debates over authenticity playing a central role in artistic circles. Bouabid Bouzaid (b. 1953), an alumnus of the art school and later an instructor there, wrote that this was a difficult stage in the country’s history as many first- and second-generation artists were preoccupied with the question of originality, how to define modernity, and the search for identity.¹⁷

Art historian María Dolores Jimenéz Valiente wrote that after independence, the ENBA maintained Bertuchi’s pedagogical model, albeit with slight modifications including an increase in courses, workshops, and teaching hours.¹⁸ From the 1960s onward, course load and study hours increased from 16 to 45 hours per week.¹⁹ Students completed preparatory coursework across drawing, anatomy, art history, decorative arts, and perspective before choosing a specialty in their second or third year.²⁰ The most significant change, perhaps as part of the king’s nationalization project, was that the school was now recognized at the secondary education level, thereby affording students the opportunity to receive a diploma at the end of their three-year study. 

In Casablanca, Belkahia and his peers believed that arts education in Morocco at the onset of independence was deficient, incompatible with the needs of Moroccans, and shaped by imported, outdated colonial models. Indeed, they referred to it as “backward” and “bastardized.”²¹ Mohamed Chabâa (1935–2013) lamented that colonialism had “corrupted” Moroccan society’s taste, while Jilali Gharbaoui (1930–1971) believed that Moroccan arts education was “incomplete” and failed to teach students “how to see.”²² The artists associated with Casablanca’s art school had a very different experience from those in Tetouan. In the 1960s and 1970s, the former led a pedagogical overhaul, moving away from fine arts teachings inherited from Europe and toward a greater exposure to local Moroccan arts and crafts, particularly the visual culture of the Imazighen, in order to form an inherently Moroccan visual culture.²³

Although the ENBA’s pedagogy remained unchanged, its first generation of artists was equally preoccupied with formal innovation and a quest for a Moroccan identity in their individual artistic practices. In the colonial period, emphasis on Orientalist subject matter or stereotypical scenes of daily life depicting an unchanged, timeless Morocco akin to Spain’s Andalusian past were used as mythmaking and propaganda to justify Spain’s presence in northern Morocco.²⁴ By the postindependence period, it can be argued that Sarghini, Meziane, Megara, Ben Cheffaj, and Amrani continued painting scenes of local people, heritage, folklore, and landscapes as a strategy in their search for national identity. They drew from a multitude of formal approaches and image traditions, including Islamic calligraphy, ancient mythology, cosmology, abstraction, and figuration, as well as from Cubism and Expressionism. They synthesized their local culture with forms inherited from multiple sources, thereby affirming Tetouanis as artists in a modern, connected world. For the sake of space, this essay will highlight several examples, but it is in no way intended to be an exhaustive review of all the artists associated with the institution and the city’s artistic scene. 

As the ENBA’s first Moroccan director, Sarghini is a central figure in Tetouan’s modern art history (fig. 4). Despite his role as an administrator and upholder of colonial-era fine arts pedagogy, he was experimenting with radically new forms to represent his culture and identity. In his 1958 Cortège de mariée (Bridal Procession), for example, he depicted a wedding procession through a natural landscape (fig. 5). Sarghini has reduced figures, animals, and objects to geometric forms—to triangles, rhombi, ovals—straying from academic realism and instead utilizing a daring formal approach. His subjects appear to chaotically merge with the tranquil background. Ultimately, Sarghini’s Cortège de mariée borrows the compositional structure and subject matter of Orientalist paintings only to deconstruct them. 

This geometric rendering can also be found in L’homme et son univers (Man and His Universe), an existential painting created just one year after Morocco declared its independence (fig. 6). At the center of the composition, a man stands alone, dressed in Moroccan attire, appearing to float in front of a mass of multicolored shapes. He looks directly at us through eyes made of dark black brushstrokes, while his hands and feet blend into a geometric background composed of colored blocks. Sarghini’s more cubist approach here emphasizes the two-dimensionality of the canvas and reduces, fractures, analyzes, and rearranges his subject, thereby presenting a new way of seeing. By the mid-to-late 1960s, his work had become increasingly abstract.

Like Sarghini, Meriem Meziane bypassed training at Tetouan’s EPBA to directly enroll in 1953 at Madrid’s Royal Academy of Arts. Born in Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the African continent connected to northeast Morocco by a land border, Meziane came from a prominent military family, a privileged position that undoubtedly granted her this institutional access. Despite this, she is considered a key figure in Tetouan’s art history—a reflection of the specificity of Tetouan’s artistic milieu. Indeed, the art community in Tetouan was relatively small and tightly knit, and so artists were integrated into its history not only through formal training or teaching, but also through sustained presence—through friendships, regular exhibitions, and active participation in the local scene. Meziane, who had a studio in the nearby Spanish enclave of Ceuta during this period, was deeply embedded in the artistic network.²⁵ She also was the first Moroccan artist in Tetouan to ever have a gallery exhibition, making her undoubtedly an important part of the city’s artistic ecosystem. It is important to distinguish between the institution itself and what has been more loosely described by Areán and Bacaïcoa as the “Tetouan School” or “Pictorial School of Tetouan”—a critical category akin to the Casablanca Group, also known as the Casablanca School—that designates a broader artistic tendency rather than a formal affiliation with the ENBA. 

Much like Sarghini, Meziane monumentalized the commonplace. According to art historian Samir El Azhar, Morocco is omnipresent in her paintings—particularly the beauty of its landscape, the generosity of its people, and its ancestral traditions.²⁶ Meziane was especially interested in women’s performance of social, ritual, and festive activities and borrowed her subjects, colors, and forms from her home in the Rif Mountains.²⁷ Art historian Mohamed Adib Slaoui has noted that her “realistic” paintings were particularly focused on Imazighen, jbali (people of the mountains), and Tetouani women and their costumes, jewelry, and social traditions, thereby giving the work a special “ethnographic and cultural vision.”²⁸ One such example is the Jebilat painting from 1950 in the permanent collection of the Mohamed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMVI) in Rabat (fig. 7). Farmworkers were a common motif in modern painting across the Arab world, and here, Meziane presents them as the backbone of a newly independent Morocco.²⁹ According to Meziane, she wished to reflect her country in her work, especially “people of my own kind, of my own race, born between the Mediterranean and Black Africa who illustrate a great ethnographic richness including all aspects of Africa, Arab, and Berber civilizations . . . a picture that is born and ends in Morocco.”³⁰

Meziane has noted that her decision to study in Madrid’s art academy was due to her desire to adopt the “figurative style” that remained a dominant artistic approach throughout her career.³¹ While loyal to figuration, she also included more experimental formal elements in her work. In an undated oil painting titled Femmes à la fenêtre (Women at the Window), she has presented a landscape that moves away from realism, favoring a more geometric style (fig. 8). The colors are bold and exaggerated, with each element of the scene heavily outlined and brushstrokes left visible. On the left-hand side of the composition, two women in white headscarves and monochromatic dresses stand side by side, one gazing outward, the other turned inward with anxiety. We can interpret this painting as a commentary on the role of women in the newly independent nation, with the seemingly anxious woman serving as a metaphor for Morocco’s past while the woman in orange represents a more optimistic future, one in which Morocco is fertile, lush, and blossoming. We can also interpret these women as symbols, or guarantors, of future generations.

The artist Meki Megara utilized a variety of formal approaches, including the artistic tendency known as hurufiyya, or “letterism,” which merged modernist abstraction with Arabic calligraphy. He was consistently in dialogue with other Arab artists throughout the 1950s and 1970s via pan-Arab conferences, biennials, and exhibitions. Of all Tetouani modern painters, Megara was perhaps the one most championed by Spanish art critics and media outlets (fig. 9). They often presented him as the perfect example of the compatibility between so-called Moroccan sensibilities, such as calligraphy, and Spanish training. Scholar and friend of the artist M’hammed Benaboud has described Megara as “always open to the West but his life was a typical Tetouani one.”³² In his 1973 text Cinco momentos en cien años de arte español: 1874–1973, Areán expresses that what is most interesting about Arab artists like Megara is that “they all master the European ways of processing matter, eroding it, and applying it with refinement”; they use “occidental” techniques yet maintain “a deep-rooted loyalty to the Arab spirit.”³³ He goes on to present Megara as an artist familiar with Spain and the “technical procedures” that “any good European painter” would know but ultimately a “man of the Islamic world” who is naturally and innately “concerned with calligraphic ease and the free flow of lines.”³⁴ This is arguably a simplistic and essentialist reading of his work. Placed in the context of postindependence Morocco, Megara’s work is radical in its engagement with artistic trends of the larger Arab world and its break from academicism. 

Saâd Ben Cheffaj, who was particularly concerned with conveying a unique Mediterranean identity, has often described himself as “of the Mediterranean”—rather than African, Arab, or Moroccan.³⁵ I view his adoption of religious iconography and signs and symbols of the ancient civilizations as a desire for mythmaking in order to equate Tetouani identity with a sophisticated Mediterranean culture. By associating with ancient civilizations, Ben Cheffaj is aligning himself with the Western world and its artistic canon—a subject he taught at ENBA (fig. 10).³⁶ He adopted figuration, expressionism, neorealism, and abstraction while exploring this unique subject matter. In the mixed-media work Composition from 1976, we see Ben Cheffaj’s signature style combining nude figures and references to ancient mythology emerge for the first time (fig. 11). The composition is structured in four sections: In the upper right, the repeated word “Amosis” references the Egyptian pharaoh, while pyramidal forms appear below. To the left, a statuesque female profile recalls the stylization of Minoan frescoes. Ben Cheffaj’s choice of subject matter aligns him with pan-Arab artistic trends of the time. Artists of the modern period were looking to ancient civilizations and regionalism; Lebanese excavated Phoenician culture, while Egyptian artists referenced the Pharaonic past.

Last but certainly not least, Ahmed Amrani is perhaps the most enigmatic figure of this generation. After returning to Morocco in 1965, he began teaching drawing, and by 1976, he had been named deputy director of ENBA, a position he held until 1984, when he left to assume his new role as director of Tetouan’s Ethnographic Museum. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Amrani’s work was the most politically charged and formally diverse of all his peers. His painting Protesta (1969)—the subject of my forthcoming monograph with Anthem Press—was a response to the Rif Revolts. I argue that other paintings, such as Adelante (1979) and Palestina (1978), serve as expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian cause and as metaphors for domestic turmoil in Morocco during the Years of Lead (1962–99).³⁷ In 1979, with the help of Bouzaid, Abdelkrim Ouazzani (b. 1954), and Habiba Bouhoumou, Amrani would launch the Spring Exhibitions in Tetouan, thereby introducing installation art to the city and changing the course of the institution for good.³⁸ 

Moroccan art critics and art historians have not been kind to Tetouan’s modern artists. In his seminal text Peinture et identité, Khalil M’Rabet deems the alumni of the school “hispanized” in their training and comments that “in the end . . . nothing special stands out, except that each one aims at a personal style.”³⁹ He goes on to argue that Tetouan’s artists were “more connected to the metropole [Madrid] than to the rest of Morocco. It is not by chance that ‘The School of Tetouan’ was for years pampered in isolation.”⁴⁰ M’Rabet’s belief that “nothing special stands out” is an example of a popular pervasive attitude among Moroccan curators, collectors, and critics that Tetouan’s art school is “conservative,” “an island,” and even “a prison” where artists regurgitated a Spanish style of art-making.⁴¹ For Mohammed Melehi (1936–2020), who studied at the EPBA before becoming a central figure in the Casablanca Group, what he and his peers were doing was a “far cry from the decrepit academic dogma” found in Tetouan’s art school.⁴² These words portray Tetouani artists as not upholding the celebratory narrative of the decolonial artist that has come to be expected of those working in postcolonial contexts. 

The Tetouan art school’s slow transition away from the conservative arts pedagogy inherited from Spain coupled with the Rif region’s disenfranchisement by the state are reasons why the city’s modern artists have been understudied, misinterpreted, and sidelined in Morocco’s national art history. Although artists like Megara, Ben Cheffaj, Amrani, and others were experimenting in their own work, as demonstrated above, a pedagogical shift at the institution did not take place until the 1990s, when a young Faouzi Laatiris (b. 1958) launched his Volume and Installation workshop in 1993. Tetouan’s artists of the 1950s through 1970s, with their diversity of formal approaches, demonstrate that Moroccan modernism is multifaceted and challenge the singular definition of Moroccan modernism that has prevailed in the rapidly developing historiography of the past few decades. 

Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders for Figures 3 and 8 in this article. If you hold the rights to any of the material used and have not been contacted, please reach out to contact_c-map@moma.org so that proper credit can be attributed or the material removed.

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Ananya Sikand: Vrishchik, which means “scorpion,” was a little magazine that you founded and edited with Bhupen Khakhar in Baroda. Published monthly or bimonthly from 1969 to 1973, it featured an array of content including poems, stories, critical essays, and folios of printed artworks.

In her 2001 article “Signatures of Dissent,” Geeta Kapur notes that Vrishchik “spoke in the many voices of those artists, critics, [and] poets” that it spotlighted, serving as an active forum for contemporary artistic and literary expressions as well as a catalyst for artists’ views on their field, on art institutions, and on social concerns.¹ Sheikh Sir, as you’ve noted in the past, Vrishchik was the need of the day, as there were hardly any communication channels through which artists could speak and raise issues at the time. To get started, could you speak about the story behind the name of the publication and about its form and materiality.

Gulammohammed Sheikh: You have rightly noted that there was a dire need for a communication channel among the artists of India, since there was only one journal—Lalit Kala Contemporary—which was very irregular. There was no other channel through which we could communicate with one another. This was an issue that bothered many of us.

I was with friends at our home in the Residency Bungalow in Baroda. About six or seven people had come for a party, and we were discussing this, and we all agreed we should do something about it. One thought was to bring out a journal, and everybody agreed wholeheartedly—but then asked, “How do we do it?”

Let me give you some background. When I was in England, I had become aware of small magazines published across the world. I used to go to bookshops and find publications by small presses, including collections of poems—such as Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. These were not well-known publishers; sometimes they were just individuals publishing their own work.

In India, the poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, who lived in Bombay in those days, had started a small journal called Damn You—a radical literary journal with a critical take on what was going on. Then J. Swaminathan, another artist and friend, brought out a journal called Contra from Delhi. He raised a number of concerns in Contra—mainly about the National Art Academy, the Lalit Kala Akademi (LKA), and its functioning. The LKA was a government-sponsored organization whose members were nominated by the government, and we all felt there was insufficient representation of artists from across India. Vrishchik took up this subject at a later stage.

But let me start with how we began. The first issue was printed at a press in Baroda called Miraj Printery, where I once had a catalogue printed. We asked them if they could print directly from a linoleum block, which they were unfamiliar with but agreed to do. In those days, printing blocks were made of zinc, fixed on a wooden block, and then printed on a letterpress with movable type. Each letter of every word had to be set by hand before the page could be run through the press with a roller. 

We chose brown packing paper because it was cheap and because we loved the color. Printing on tinted paper was far more interesting than printing on white. I had previous experience using lino blocks while working on a Gujarati literary journal called Kshitij (1959–67), which was edited by my literary mentor Suresh Joshi. For a journal of limited resources, I devised a method of producing original prints by taking linoleum to Baroda-based artists—K. G. Subramanyan, my teacher, and Jyoti Bhatt, my senior—and having them hand-cut the block. I would then mount it on a wooden block of the same gauge as a letterpress block so that the hand-cut lino could be printed on the letterpress. This meant that 500 copies could be printed at once, and the lino block remained undamaged. The advantage was that it was an original linocut print that could be made available to 500 people simultaneously. I used to go to the press and sit there while each issue was being printed, checking every copy to see whether the print came out well, whether the ink showed through on the back of the page—which sometimes happened with poor printing in those days. You had to learn to work with the printers to bring out the best result. This is the approach we brought to Vrishchik. 

As we were discussing possible names for the journal, somebody asked, “What is your rashi—your zodiac sign?” It turned out that four people in our larger group were Scorpios, including my wife, Nilima. We thought it was a good idea to call it “Scorpion” because it could have its own life—and a little sting. So Vrishchik emerged, and we put a linocut of a scorpion designed by my friend Vinod Ray Patel on the cover (fig. 1).

The purpose of Vrishchik was to reach out not only to visual artists but also to artists of all denominations. We made a list of filmmakers, writers, painters, etc., of about 250 people, and thought we’d just send it out.

The first issue had six pages. Bhupen [Khakhar], my coeditor, produced a little gem of notes on the visual scene, mocking and relishing popular taste—he called them “visual notes.” Geeta Kapur contributed a poem. Would you believe it? Arvind [Krishna Mehrotra] shared a poem from a series about his wife called “Bacchi Chakra.” After that, poems appeared in several issues. On the last page, I wrote a short editorial about current events. As you know, 1969 was a period of great upheaval because of the communal riots that were raging in Ahmedabad and Baroda and causing great turbulence across Gujarat. I began my first write-up by reflecting on the situation that prevailed at that time—a rumination called “Afternoon.”

Suresh Joshi had written [an essay] on the poet Rajvi Patel—one of the finest Gujarati poets of my generation—which had originally been commissioned by the journal Books Abroad. We reprinted it in the second issue. For the third issue, Vinod Ray designed another cover—this one featuring a hippie-like man and woman with their hair down; both had bodies of scorpions (fig. 2). That issue included writings on cinema, including a delightful riposte by Bhupen in Gujarati on Bollywood films (this was the only non-English write-up in Vrishchik) as well as drawings by an artist friend of my generation, Nagji Patel.

Lucy Gallun: Could you point out some of the contributors to the early issues of the magazine—the types of things they were wanting to circulate among the community and what you chose to include, as you have already started to do. 

GMS: I ran a little office from my home, writing letters to poet friends, writer friends, painter friends, telling them about Vrishchik. Those who received my letters became interested in contributing. Initially, only artists and writers based in Baroda contributed. But later on, I met, for example, a visiting Greek writer who had written about the coup in Athens. I asked to read her piece and found it worthy of publication. She agreed but wanted her identity concealed and chose the pseudonym Erato—the piece was called “A Greek Story.” Vinod Ray made an illustration to accompany it.

Then Bhupen and I were up to some mischief. We decided to buy a popular landscape poster—the kind sold on footpaths—roughly double the size of Vrishchik. We bought 200 or 300 copies and, on the blank reverse side, concocted a dialogue between an artist and an art critic. We came down rather heavily on absurd stories circulating among artists about their role and that of art critics and criticism. It was part gossip, part serious critique, and as expected, it angered many people. We thought it was a way of communicating with our community with no holds barred. We received a number of letters in response; some enjoyed the tongue in cheek humor, but others found it hard to stomach.

The subsequent issue reproduced letters from GIs in Vietnam. It was followed by an issue featuring a dialogue on the state of contemporary printmaking between Jagmohan Chopra, who started Group 8 in Delhi, Bishamber Khanna, Zarina, Jyoti Bhatt, and me. This issue carried ten prints by the aforementioned artists and by K. G. Subramanyan, Jeram Patel, Bhupen, and Anupam Sud—all well-known artists of the day. 

After that, Arvind sent a long poem “Song of the Rolling Earth,” which we published. Adil Jussawalla, another well-known poet, submitted a poem called “Dog.” I wrote “Miniature Purana”—a critical view of how art history in India was being written at the time. 

In issues that followed, we focused on saint poetry. I came across translations by Arun Kolatkar—a bilingual poet who translated Muktabai, Janabai, and Namdev—and was deeply moved by them. My favorite poem, by Janabai, goes:

I eat God 
I drink God 
I sleep on God 
I buy God 
I count God 
I deal with God 
God is here
God is there
Void is not devoid of God 
God is within
God is without
And moreover, there is God to spare.

Arvind had also begun translating the great 15th- and 16th-century poet Kabir. One of his best poems, in Arvind’s translation, reads:

The kings shall go, so will their pretty queens
Courtiers and all proud ones shall go
Pandits chanting the Vedas shall go and go with those who listen to them
Masochist yogis and bright intellectuals shall go
Go the moon and the sun and the water and wind
Thus, only those can remain whose minds are tied to the rocks.

My friend Gieve Patel—the painter, poet, and playwright—had visited Baroda in the early 1960s and met Suresh Joshi, who had written on the Gujarati medieval poet called Vasto. Gieve sat with Joshi, took extensive notes about translating Vasto, and from these notes, produced three poems, which we also published.

The next issues raised the question of the impending Triennale—the international exhibition planned by the LKA (fig. 3). Many issues were devoted to artists’ letters questioning the relevance of the Triennale. Artists from all over the country wrote in with their views on the impending event—K. G. Subramanyan from Baroda; Pranab Ranjan Ray from Calcutta; Krishen Khanna, Swaminathan, and Roshan Alkazi from Delhi; K. K. Hebbar from Karnataka; and Akbar Padamsee from Bombay. Eventually the Triennale did take place—along with protests and controversy. Vrishchik became a forum for protests against the LKA and its reform. Most of us boycotted the Triennale and the LKA, and so the government was obliged to appoint a commission of inquiry headed by Justice Khosla. After traveling around the country to consult artists, [Khosla’s] suggestion was that the LKA implement a process by which artists themselves elect representatives to serve on its general council.

These issues also raised other questions—such as the implications of internationalism. Geeta wrote on this subject, and Vivan Sundaram, her partner at a later stage, wrote a rejoinder. We published both. So, these conversations on the Triennale and on what kind of internationalism India should have eventually led to the reformation of the LKA.

Our main interest was to arouse awareness of issues within the artist community. We were dealing with multiple generations of artists who were active in those days—K. K. Hebbar and Krishen Khanna belonged to the first generation, Swaminathan and I to the next, and then there were younger artists. The basic purpose of Vrishchik was to create that kind of awareness across generations. 

Lanka Tattersall: Could you tell us a little more about the state of printmaking in Baroda, which you mentioned was the focus of one of the issues?

GMS: In Baroda, printmaking was an important part of the syllabus right from the beginning—from the 1950s onward. Students of painting took printmaking as a subsidiary subject. I learned printmaking in the graphic arts department of the Faculty [of Fine Arts]. The Smithsonian Institution hosted a printmaking workshop in Delhi in 1970, inviting 100 artists from across India and providing facilities to work on the best papers and zinc plates. Over a month, we learned etching and aquatint under Paul Lingren. On returning to Baroda, I bought an etching press, set it up in my home, and worked on a series. Jyoti Bhatt took to printmaking intensively, and it eventually turned out to be his principal métier. Others who took to printmaking and produced exceptional works were Laxma Goud, Devraj Dakoji, D. L. N. Reddy, and Purushottam and Rini Dhumal—all of whom worked at the Faculty under the guidance of N. B. Joglekar, who headed the graphic arts department.

AS: As additional context, each handcrafted issue of Vrishchik was supplemented by a free original artwork—modest in scale—whether a linocut, woodcut, or lithograph. Sheikh Sir, could you speak further on the artworks that accompanied each issue?

GMS: I had seen four issues of Contra that printed artworks using machine-made blocks. This made me think that Vrishchik could introduce linocuts, woodcuts, and other printmaking mediums. So, while we printed an artwork on the cover, we also included a loose copy of it inside Vrishchik—so that those who wanted could mount and preserve it or put it on display.

As for how Vrishchik was produced: as I said earlier, I was running a little office from my own home, writing letters, keeping correspondence in big files, and sometimes getting my students to help. We had 500 copies per issue, and 250 to 300 had to be sent out, which meant writing addresses, stuffing printed copies in envelopes, and posting them all—which was conducted entirely from the Residency Bungalow. I enjoyed it. I asked Bhupen to handle the accounts, which he did—he was a chartered accountant.

The press we used from the third issue onward, 3-A Associates, was run by N. B. Joglekar and he was amenable to any kind of experiment we wanted to try. First, we gave him linocuts to print. Then I said, “Mr. Joglekar, you also have an offset press.” Offset is like lithography but on a plate—you draw directly on the plate. So, Bhupen and I and others made drawings right there, which were then transferred and printed. Bhupen made a drawing of a tailor, among others (fig. 4).

LG: You’ve discussed your office at the bungalow, working with Bhupen Khakhar, the head of the graphics department, who served as printer, and your students helping with the mailing. Could you say more about the setting at MSU Baroda—and at the same time, your relationship to other artists in other cities, particularly Bombay, given our group has been discussing the art scene there at length?

GMS: As you know, the artist community in India is like an extended family—we all knew each other. I used to travel to Bombay, meet friends there, see their exhibitions, and the same applied to Delhi. I had also been to Santiniketan, to Calcutta, and to several other places. I had personal friendships with many artists, so I asked them for contributions for Vrishchik, and they offered willingly.

LG: Was there something specific about Baroda that enabled this kind of journal to happen in a particular way?

GMS: Baroda was very special among art schools in India at that time. It was one of the most liberal institutions, which allowed all kinds of activities, and we had students from all walks of life and sections of society.

The pioneers of the Faculty had Gandhian ideals—of building something they could handle without hankering after what was beyond their means. The institution was built on basics: painting, which needed a good studio; sculpture, which needed casting facilities; printmaking, which needed an etching press, a litho press etc.; and art history, [which was] taught to every student regardless of department. The Story of Art—a history of world art—which I taught for almost eighteen years was key to every student’s education. I had very young and bright students; they included Vivan, who came from the elite Doon School, while others came from small towns and tribal hinterlands. I taught the Story of Art in English for degree students and in Hindi for diploma students. At some stage, students who knew I was Gujarati asked why I didn’t teach it in Gujarati, so then I taught three classes on the same subject. In the first, Vivan would bring up Jackson Pollock; in the second, students only knew what was happening in their part of India; and in the third, some had not even heard of the Mona Lisa. That was the big challenge—how to teach all of them. It opened my eyes to the diversity of the world of artists coming to the Faculty.

But I will also go back to my background. I grew up in a small town called Surendranagar in Gujarat, where I started writing poetry, drawing, and painting. In those days it was customary for good schools to have a hand-painted, handwritten annual journal. One of my teachers—a poet who led me to write in Gujarati—decided to make such a journal to be placed in the public library every week. He decided that we would produce it together. We went to the Khadi Bhandar—khadi is the hand-spun cloth associated with Gandhi—which produced a very rough handmade paper that I enjoyed working on. Today, all artists love such papers because they are resilient and receptive to paint. On them, I would paint the cover, draw the titles of articles, and illustrate a picture story for children, while my teacher wrote short stories, a thought of the day, and poems. This ran for a year when I was about fifteen. I still have some copies—I showed them recently in an exhibition of my printmaking.

Jay Levenson: You mentioned Vrishchik was addressed primarily to artists. Were there also collectors who were involved?

GMS: No. Our list included visual artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers—about 200 people, many of whom we knew personally. I think there were hardly any collectors in those days. Those who may have collected works by [M. F.] Husain or Krishen Khanna were not accessible to us.

In those days, if we wanted to exhibit, we did it ourselves. No gallery would pick up our work. We took our paintings to Bombay or Delhi, mounted the exhibition ourselves, printed our own catalogues, and tried to sell the work by sitting in the gallery. I remember my first exhibition in Bombay: I had learned from my seniors that canvases had to be rolled up, so all our canvases were rolled. We took our stretchers, bound everything up, and booked a first-class train for the occasion. In Bombay, we couldn’t afford taxis, so we used horse carriages to transport everything to Jehangir Art Gallery, a public gallery that only opened around 11 o’clock. We’d arrive at six in the morning, wait for hours, then unpack our things, put the frames back on the canvases, and mount the show. A carpenter helped, if we could afford one; otherwise we did it ourselves.

As for collectors, I remember that Air India was a major buyer in those days. There was a gentleman called Jal Cowasji who made the rounds of galleries—and everybody would trail him, because he was the main person acquiring work for the airline. By 1969, the situation had improved with a few more galleries, but private galleries were still very few.

Rattanamol Singh Johal: Could you reflect on the relationship between Vrishchik during that very productive period from 1969 to 1973 and your painting practice at the same time. Reading the editorial from the first issue— “Afternoon”—I was struck by how much it resonates with paintings like Returning Home After Long Absence (1969–73; fig. 5) and Speechless City (1975; fig. 6). Could you speak to the threads that connect your poetry, your narrative writing, and your painting?

GMS: All of it—my writing on communalism, on silence, on isolation; my painting; my publishing of Vrishchik—were connected. 

When I returned from England in 1966, I took a long, nearly three-month journey, traveling by road from London to Bombay via Europe—buses, trains, walking, everything. That journey allowed me to discover India, and I began to look at everything with fresh eyes. I remember being on a bus near Jhansi, watching the landscape change as the bus moved so fast that distant trees appeared to rush toward me and mountains shrank. Experiences like this were accumulating. It was also when I felt I should write my memoir. I was on a train heading home to Surendranagar, and on whatever scraps of paper I had, I started scribbling notes on returning home. That memoir in Gujarati is now published, and hopefully an English edition will appear soon.

At the same time, I began the painting Returning Home After Long Absence. My memoir and my painting went hand in hand, opening pages of each other. In the painting, I brought in my mother, images of the town I grew up in, an Islamic backdrop with an image of the Prophet, a big wall—I wrote an entire chapter in my memoir on a wall—and trees, particularly the peepal tree, the Ficus religiosa, which was a beautiful tree that I could see from my window at the Faculty. All these things combined during those years.

By 1973, I was painting both from within myself and from what I saw around me—I painted two works called Man I and Man II (figs. 7, 8). Man I is a metaphorical work in which a man is seated, with his head on his lap. In Man II, a man holds another man [who is tied up] as an object of public display. That was when my eyes opened to the politics of India—which eventually led to Speechless City, painted while the Emergency was in effect. The roots of many paintings that came later were sown during that same period, while I was also publishing Vrishchik and writing poetry. 

AS: I’d like to close by asking about your commitment to multilingualism across your writing, poetry, teaching and publishing practices. 

GMS: I do not really know how to explain it—all three languages come to me naturally. I knew Gujarati because it is my mother tongue, and so if I want to write poetry or creative prose, like my memoir, I choose Gujarati. I learned Hindi on my own—and everyone in India knows some Hindi because of Hindi cinema. And English, I learned in school and college.

Vrishchik was, in part, a kind of lesson for me: It allowed me to polish my English. I did not know English very well at the start, but those four years helped me learn it properly. I was communicating with a large number of people, writing and receiving letters, editing contributions, proofreading—and when Adil or Gieve wrote in perfect English, I had to ensure that every word was printed exactly as they had written it.

All of this was part of my life, [as was] living within a family with my children and Nilima. I cannot really describe myself. I can only say that all of this is part of me—not something I took on as a challenge or as a duty, but something that came naturally. It was all part of my makeup.

Every Indian speaks two or three languages: the local language, Hindi, English or another language. We are plural by nature, multilingual. We think in multiple languages simultaneously. That is the makeup of the average mind, and thus, I am not so different. By writing in multiple languages, I have learned that I have to find myself in each of them.

The C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai Group would like to express its sincere thanks to Gulammohammed Sheikh and to the team at the Asia Art Archive in India for making Vrishchik available to us. The magazine’s various issues can be accessed via the following link.

This essay stems from the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) Bombay/Mumbai initiative at MoMA. The 2024-2026 Bombay/Mumbai research program was conceived and organized by Ananya Sikand (C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai Fellow) and Lucy Gallun (Curator, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography). Read more about C-MAP here. 

The post On <em>Vrishchik</em>: A Conversation with Gulammohammed Sheikh  appeared first on post.

Following Algeria’s independence in 1962, a group of artists aspired to create a new visual idiom, one that could carry collective memory while moving beyond state-sponsored art movements—particularly Socialist Realism—and breaking away from colonial representations.² This impulse developed as a momentum shaped by the urgency to redefine modes of artistic production within a postcolonial framework. Among the designations used to describe it, the “School of the Sign” remains the most ambivalent, at once reductive and generative. The term itself is often misunderstood in two ways: First, it implies the existence of a unified movement based on a shared aesthetic. Second, it risks confining a broad concept to a form of formal nationalism, suggesting that the turn to the Sign is a retreat into identity or the revival of a dormant tradition.

The “School of the Sign” refers to a conceptual and material proposition concerned with how the Sign can be mobilized as a critical space through art and literature. Far from constituting a school in the institutional sense, it is more aptly understood as a constellation of artists who explored the “Sign”—a term they preferred to “letter” or “symbol”—as a dense visual structure capable of articulating a grammar of liberation.³ Guided by the thought of writer Jean Sénac, Algerian artists such as Mohamed Khadda (1930–1991; fig. 1), Choukri Mesli (1931–2017), Denis Martinez (b. 1941; fig. 2) and, later, Ali Silem (b. 1947) contributed to a conceptualization of the Sign as a palimpsest that is simultaneously abstract and situated, mystical and insurgent.⁴ This concept must also be considered in relation to the visual frameworks that have long shaped the reception of North African art, ranging from Orientalist projections to patrimonial models. Rather than reiterating colonial categories, these artists treated the Sign as a site of critical engagement against academic norms.

A central figure in Algeria’s postindependence cultural scene, Jean Sénac was primarily known as a poet and art critic, but he also played a crucial role as a mediator among artistic, intellectual, and political circles. In 1964, he founded Galerie 54, the first independent exhibition space in Algiers, which he conceived as a platform for experimental practices. Here, Sénac presented the work of artists such as Khadda and Martinez and coined the term “École du Noûn” (Noûn School). At the height of the postcolonial cultural revival, he made a first attempt at theorizing his observations, writing: “The Sign, rising from centuries past, from remote douars, from the songs of the meddahs [storytellers], bears witness to the permanence in the Maghreb of what could be called the École du Noûn.”⁵ The “École du Noûn,” according to him, arises from the sensuality of the letter noûn, drawing on its dual resonance as a sacred character in the Qur’an and a visual form associated with desire. Sénac’s interpretation posits the noûn as all at once a female breast,⁶ an open beginning, a Sufi promise, and a corpoème (body-poem)—the latter a figuration in which poetry and corporeality are inseparable. This fusion of corporeal pleasure and textual creation lies at the heart of his poetry.⁷

Rather than defining a unified movement, Sénac sought to name a shared sensibility he perceived across the practices of several artists. From the late 1960s onward, he increasingly referred to this sensibility as the School of the Sign. The Sign, in his view, constitutes a living matrix rooted in Algerian heritage while remaining open to contemporary invention. While some artists—most notably Mohamed Khadda—engaged closely with Sénac’s writings and shared his conviction that the Sign could catalyze an artistic renewal,⁸ others maintained a more distant or independent relationship to his theoretical framework. Indeed, the School of the Sign did not emerge as a self-declared collective or common agenda but rather as Sénac’s own critical reading of converging artistic trajectories connected through dialogue and proximity. Artists of the Sign drew inspiration from Amazigh and Arabic scripts, prehistoric petroglyphs, and vernacular forms, aspiring to create a simultaneity of heritage and revolution. They did this by, for example, fragmenting cursive letters into angular modules, overlaying layers of script until legibility dissolved, or embedding geometric motifs from woven textiles into abstract chromatic fields. 

The School of the Sign resonated with other artistic strategies in the region, such as Hurufiyya, an aesthetic movement that emerged among artists reinvesting ancestral signs as a means of resisting folklorization and gesturing toward plural modernities.⁹ Emerging across the Arab world from the late 1940s onward, Hurufiyya designated a broad tendency that reintroduced the Arabic letter into modern artistic practice, often emphasizing its calligraphic and spiritual dimensions. While artists associated with the School of the Sign shared this refusal of folkloric repetition, they approached the letter less as a calligraphic form and more as a destabilized visual structure displaced from its conventional function. The turn to rock paintings, desert lines, and marginal alphabets did not aim to produce a nostalgic aesthetic; rather, it sought to reactivate the semiotic depth of these forms by working their internal tensions between figuration and abstraction, legibility and opacity. In Algeria, this engagement developed largely outside formal Hurufiyya circles and was instead shaped by local postindependence debates and artistic networks. Later figures, such as Rachid Koraïchi (b. 1947), would more explicitly align with Hurufiyya principles, albeit within a different historical moment and a transnational framework.

The School of the Sign was not devoid of internal frictions—notably, artists debated the very definition of popular art. The tensions ranged, on the one hand, from opposition to approaches that understand popular art as a shared visual heritage to be stabilized and made socially legible to, on the other hand, positions that emphasized abstraction and formal experimentation as a necessary break from inherited and imposed models. Multiple approaches to the Sign coexisted without canceling one another. These divergences became particularly visible in the distinct ways individual artists positioned themselves in relation to abstraction, spirituality, and the use of the letter. Artists such as Abdallah Benanteur (1931–2017) gravitated toward lyrical abstraction infused with an Islamic sensibility.¹⁰

Born in Western Algeria, Benanteur followed an artistic path shaped by close personal and intellectual affinities rather than formal group affiliations. His long-standing friendship with Mohamed Khadda, forged in the mid-1940s when the two painted together around Mostaganem before traveling together to Algiers and later to France, was formative in this respect. Benanteur also maintained close ties with Jean Sénac, whose work he illustrated on several occasions and with whom he shared a commitment to postindependence cultural renewal.¹¹ Taken together, these relationships situate Benanteur within the same generational and cultural milieu as the artists associated with the School of the Sign, even though his practice gradually shifted toward a more autonomous lyrical abstraction.¹² His work draws on the iconoclastic heritage of Maghrebi Islam and articulates a dynamic sense of universality. Although he occasionally deployed letters in his work and engaged in debates surrounding the Sign, Benanteur remained wary of prescriptive frameworks, privileging an approach grounded in individual spirituality and a universal conception of modern art.¹³

For his part, Sénac emphasized the proximity and divergence of Benanteur and Khadda in terms of their relationship to the Sign and to Islamic visual heritage. Referring to Khadda’s audacity in “reintegrating the Signs into the Body”¹⁴ and seeking to “reincarnate the arabesque of his ancestors,”¹⁵ Sénac notes that Benanteur, for his part, “having started from the Sign, seems to want to preserve only its trace, its aura,” bringing the noûn back “to its point of preciseness,”¹⁶ whereas Khadda carried it toward a lyrical transcendence. This distinction sheds light on Benanteur’s singular position: situated within the same generational milieu, yet gradually moving toward a more autonomous and meditative abstraction.

Others, like Choukri Mesli (1931–2017), worked the letter as a sensual form in its own right, one saturated with ambiguity, and explored the representation of the female body. His engagement does not follow the conventions of the academic nude; it is an allegorical image of the nation itself, tattooed, inscribed, and resilient, carrying cultural memory and strength in the face of war and historical trauma.¹⁷ In the later Les Protectrices (1991), he continued to work the Sign in close relation to the female body, intertwining fragments of letters with corporeal forms (fig. 3). Here, writing does not appear as an autonomous calligraphic pattern but instead as an inscription borne by the figure itself—tattoo-like marks and the Arabic title al-ḥāmiyāt (the protectresses) fold the letter into the body, suggesting language as something carried and worn. The painting shows that even decades after the emergence of the School of the Sign, Mesli maintained an interest in the Sign as a lived and embodied language rather than a purely formal device.

Mohamed Khadda, by contrast, approached the Sign as a political project.¹⁸ In his collection of essays Éléments pour un art nouveau (1972), he insists on the need to create a plastic writing that is neither subjected to Western abstraction nor limited to a rigid tradition.¹⁹ This position was shaped in part by his experience as a typographer in France, as well as by his artistic training at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where he was exposed to modernist debates while remaining attentive to the materiality of writing. In this same collection of writings, Khadda describes his creative process as one shaped by layers, rhythm, the interplay of positive and negative spaces, and the tensions between surface and depth.²⁰ He emphasizes the plastic transformation of writing and its capacity to convey spiritual, poetic, and political dimensions, evoking letters as “male or female, solar or lunar,” and animated by a suggestive power akin to incantation.²¹

A photograph of Khadda’s atelier (fig. 4) provides a more concrete understanding of this process. This image shows a space filled with canvases at different stages, placed side by side and often overlapping. Signs reappear in one painting after another, shifting in scale and density. Tools and materials remain visible. The studio reflects a practice based on repetition, layering, and gradual transformation, which is consistent with Khadda’s background in typography and his sustained attention to the potentials of the Sign.

Some artists associated with the School of the Sign decided to further expand their reflection on the Sign by founding the Aouchem group (aouchem means “tattoo”) in 1967. Initiated by Denis Martinez, Choukri Mesli, and Mohamed Benbaghdad, among others, the group proclaimed in a groundbreaking manifesto that “the Sign is stronger than bombs.”²² Aouchem approached the Sign as a trace of ancestral gestures and collective memory. They drew from the prehistoric cave paintings of Tassili n’Ajjer, popular talismans, and sacred scripts, introducing a decolonial interplay between art and ritual. The group asserted a lineage that was both African and Arabo-Berber and bound together less by formal doctrine than by friendship. Aouchem was, above all, a circle of close friends who met regularly, particularly in Blida, where long discussions and moments in everyday life contributed to their cohesion. These ties were not limited to exhibitions: Members also collaborated on texts, radio programs with poets, and the drafting of the manifesto. Alongside their collective initiatives, they informally circulated symbolic gestures, such as emblems or amulets bearing the group’s name, without ever imposing a uniform aesthetic.

Jean Sénac, acting as a mentor, encouraged the inclusion of other Algerian artists, such as Baya (1931–1998) and Arezki Zerarti (1938–2024). He also played an important role as a mediator between artists and writers, maintaining close ties with members of the group and supporting the circulation of their work through exhibitions, publications, and broadcasts. In Algeria, where figuration could be perceived as either an academic colonial inheritance or propaganda, Aouchem chose abstracted figuration, opting for hybrid and interstitial creatures. Their refusal of both illustrative imagery and pure abstraction became a gesture of emancipation. The covers of the 1967 Aouchem exhibition catalogues (figs. 5, 6) reflect this stance. Both compositions bring together signs, fragmented figures, handwritten elements, and ornamental motifs, which are arranged without a clear hierarchy or focal point. Figurative references appear and dissolve without settling into a stable image or legible scene. Printed with a mimeograph, the catalogues preserve traces of their production: irregular lines, uneven lettering, visible overlaps. These material imperfections distinguish them from institutional graphic formats. The covers do not present a coherent visual statement; instead, they allow disparate marks, images, and gestures to coexist on the page.

Within Aouchem, the Sign became a means of activating a form of visual consciousness grounded in collective practice. While the group shared common concerns with the artists associated with the School of the Sign, it did not operate as its continuation. Rather, Aouchem developed in parallel, shifting the emphasis to material processes, ritual gestures, and collective experimentation. The materiality of the works themselves played a part in this effort. Some artists treated the canvas as a ritual surface, layered with ochers, earth, ash, natural pigments, and ink—materials that evoke an ancestral and vernacular register (such as henna or mineral earths), linking the pictorial gesture to imagined precolonial practices. For them, the Sign was no longer confined to drawing or inscription, but instead embodied in matter itself, making materials carriers of meaning. In addition to sourcing ancestral materials, Aouchem artists drew from their recent historical experience to develop a new vocabulary of the Sign. The barbed wire—a recurrent motif in the works of Denis Martinez, for example, emerged as a charged symbol: at once border, carceral memory, and visual marker of the constrained body.²³

Denis Martinez’s Le petit miroir (1967; fig.7) illustrates how the precepts of the School of the Sign materialized within Aouchem as an expanded artistic practice. The piece is a mixed-media assemblage made of three branches, animal bones, and paper, among other materials, and stands somewhere between an image and a sculpture. Across the surface, there are silver, calligraphy-like motifs—dots, geometric patterns, short gestural arabesques, and words drawn from Algerian dialect—that are placed on fractured planes and roughly human-shaped forms. These Signs do not organize themselves into writing; indeed, they remain dispersed, uneven, and materially present. The combination of painted wood and raised forms gives the Sign a totemic presence, grounding it in artisanal practice. Here, it is no longer conceived as a system of visual forms to be read, but rather as a physical presence embedded in the object itself. Freed from its function as writing and reconfigured as an element of the assemblage, the Sign emerges through matter and volume, extending its logic beyond the pictorial field into a material and experiential register.

Ali Silem is another Algerian artist who built on the concept of the Sign. He defended the idea of a Sign in motion and of an open visual alphabet that rejects both identity-based assignment and state appropriation. He once remarked, “When you take a bird’s feather, for instance, you notice that it has the shape of the [Arabic letter] alif.”²⁴ For him, the task was to move beyond the “School of the Sign” as a label or myth and to reimagine it as a fluid space of creation nourished by the friction between ancient forms and contemporaneity. While Silem’s work remains in dialogue with the concerns articulated by Mohamed Khadda and the artists associated with Aouchem, it unfolds along a distinct register. The Sign, in Silem’s view, does not reference a glorified past.²⁵ Moreover, although his practice—like that of Aouchem—reflects his interest in nonrepresentational Signs and a refusal of academic figuration, it is not positioned as a rupture and ritual confrontation. In one untitled work, for example, calligraphic fragments dissolve into color, rhythm, and painterly gestures, preventing the Sign from settling into meaning, keeping it in a state of visual flux (fig. 8).

Whereas Benanteur tended to preserve the Sign as an evanescent trace or aura, while Mesli embedded it within figuration, Silem approached the letter through restraint and compositional measure. As Khadda observed, Silem’s surfaces are structured by carefully “mastered trajectories,” a “cascade of noûn,” an “ascension of lâm,” and the discreet presence of alif as tutelary linear anchors, so that the Sign functions less as an embodied or atmospheric motif than as a controlled calligraphic architecture oriented toward balance and serenity.²⁶ For Silem, the Sign functions as a phenomenological event that is experienced before it is interpreted.²⁷ This emphasis on color, vibration, and poetic resonance is reinforced by the artist’s parallel activity as a poet, a pursuit he shares with artists such as Denis Martinez, for whom the Sign also circulates between visual and textual registers. In his lecture “Peintres et poètes d’Algérie,” Silem situated Algerian visual practice within a long continuum of “written stones” (hajarat el maktûba), where alphabets and drawings have been intertwined for millennia, and where contemporary artists continue to seek an embodied memory of inscription.²⁸ In this lecture, Silem reflected on the long-standing entanglement of poetry and painting in Algeria, situating contemporary practices of the Sign within an older culture of orality, and tracing the role of artist-poet collaborations and bibliophile editions in the postindependence period.

What is singular in the way these artists engage the Sign is its semiotic operation. It is neither purely symbolic (in the Saussurean sense) nor reducible to index or icon. Beyond repeating motifs from pre-Islamic, Islamic, or Amazigh visual repertoires, these artists have transformed the Sign into a language charged with symbolic meaning that has been polished and displaced from its original function. It is often syncretic, combining plastic elements from disparate image regimes—magico-religious, vernacular, calligraphic, modern—within an unstable grammar. The point for these artists was not to convey a clear message but instead to unsettle the gaze, to demand a mode of reading that remains open, partial, and unresolved. These practices echo critical semiotic theories (such as those of Roland Barthes or Umberto Eco), which consider the Sign not as a transparent translation of content but rather as a surface of friction between the visible and the sayable.²⁹

If the Sign once served as a tool of decolonization, it has also, over time, been absorbed, recontextualized, and periodically emptied of its initial function. The legacy of the so-called School of the Sign has been transmitted in fragmented ways—celebrated as a landmark of Algerian modernity, yet often reconstructed retrospectively through teleological narratives.³⁰ Over the decades, some artists have claimed this lineage. The very use of the term “school” has contributed to a partial museification of their artistic gestures, transforming what was a critical impulse into a closed chapter in the national art historical canon. This shift must also be understood within a broader context: the rise of postcolonial cultural policies, the globalization of art markets, and the rebranding of the Sign as a “cultural marker.” Displayed in this context, the Sign risks becoming precisely what it once resisted: an inert ornament rather than a living grammar of liberation. 

In this sense, the School of the Sign is more than just a historical episode or an art movement. It is a critical horizon ready to be reactivated within other struggles and that stands as a philosophy of making and an ethic of form. In his essay “Sur L’olivier,” Khadda compares the Sign to an ancestral olive tree: a living structure, as opposed to a fixed form, in a steady process of growth and resistance, continually reshaped by time and experience.³¹ For Khadda, the olive tree stands as a point of origin, a genesis from which Signs and writing emerge as traces (and not representations) bearing the memory of endurance, erosion, and continuity. With his conception of the Sign, Khadda proposes a method to inhabit Signs without either taming or submitting to them.

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In looking at photographs of live models, plaster casts of Greek sculptures, and students on the website (figs. 1a and 1b) of the Sir J. J. School of Art (JJ) in Bombay (present-day Mumbai), one notices how the condition of the body and labor in relation to art is a haunting presence in 20th-century photography. Shot between the 1930s and 1990s by three notable photographers—Homai Vyarawalla (1913–2012), Foy Nissen (1931–2018), and Raghubir Singh (1942–1999)—the photographs I’ve chosen to highlight in this essay articulate the interface of art and labor over a long and unwieldy terrain.¹ I also analyze how these images capture the unstable status of student artists and its correspondence to the precarious trajectory of JJ.

This essay marks four phases in twentieth-century Bombay. It touches upon the nationalist heyday of the late colonial period, coinciding with the interwar years and the eventual onset of deindustrialization in the postcolonial city as evidenced by the Great Textile Mill Strike (1982–83). In doing so, it delineates the popularity of the Shiv Sena, the ethno-regionalist, right-wing-organization-turned-political party, from the 1960s to the ushering in of neoliberal reforms and state-sponsored violence in the early 1990s. The photographs discussed showcase the distressing circumstances of the city’s working poor as they came knocking on the doors of the art school. They represent a departure from prior illustrative studies, many of which depict the laborer as inseparable from their craft. These earlier visual renderings not only are rigid caste-based occupational studies, but also commodify and group people and goods for the colonial economy.² While the unnamed subjects of these types of images are categorized as “Santal Mother, Girl, or Man,” “Fishwomen [sic] of Bombay” (the native Koli community), or “Palanquin Bearers, Bombay” (who were mainly Dalit Mahars), the bourgeois photographers who took them are identified and thus accorded authorship (figs. 2 and 3).³

In the 20th century, as live models at JJ were placed in conversation with plaster casts of Greek sculptures, the worn human forms of the models underscored the stark valorization of art over labor. The photographs that capture this dichotomy evoke the continued incongruence between outmoded colonial art instruction and the parlous position of both fine artists and laborers at JJ and beyond.⁴ While nationalist sentiment swept through many aspects of life in the 1930s, the influx of Eurocentric methods extended unevenly to the temporary hiring of live models to proclaim an “authentic” Indian art. These live art sessions disembodied the model by decontextualizing and romanticizing the absented adivasi (tribal) figure or pious, religious woman as the symbolic native type, untainted by the trappings of colonial modernity (figs. 4 and 5).⁵ Anonymized men and women assembled as native types bore witness to the canonization of carving, painting, etching, and setting in stone—that is, to the colonial practice of classifying and essentializing select communities.⁶ While live models and art students were interminably devalued and alienated during deindustrialization, some of them, as seen in photographs by Vyarawalla and Singh, resisted being cast as the marginal figure by returning the subaltern gaze.

JJ was established in 1857 by cotton and opium merchant Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy (1783–1859) to provide relief to and upskill displaced migrant workers in what was a ruthlessly competitive colonial market. However, it eventually cultivated only a preferential, cultured class.⁷ On the one hand, though JJ facilitated commissions for artists to design sculptural forms in city structures, a detachment from and dismissal of Indian artistry steadily grew among the Indian art circuit in the late 19th century for various reasons, including the difficulty in cultivating a sustained patronage.⁸ As artisan and agrarian populations were compelled to migrate in large numbers to Bombay and engage in laborious work in textile mills, construction, shipping, and other manufacturing industries, their lives were upended on an unprecedented scale by colonial expansion.⁹ On the other hand, while opportunities may have been available to some prospective students to apply to JJ, many of those gaining acceptance fell by the wayside as they faced extraordinary difficulties there, with only a handful later succeeding as fine artists.¹⁰ However, with concerted endeavors over time, JJ’s reputation improved, and students from other regions were able to avail of dedicated scholarships and thus to enroll.¹¹

JJ was premised on the bourgeois, individualistic apprenticeship structure that developed in response to industrialization in England and Europe from the mid-19th century onward. As with other colonial art schools in India, JJ exacerbated a sharp divide between traditional, familial, and community-based workshops and the colonial education system, which mandated English as the language of instruction with prerequisite training in geometry and arithmetic at the admissions stage.¹² These “reformist” requirements, along with education fees, systematically disqualified and disbarred poor and caste oppressed artisans, thereby separating the field of craft from that of art. Even though craftspeople were considered important practitioners and knowledge-makers, they were viewed as mere copyists and only brought to art schools to exhibit their artistry and wares and assist students (fig. 6).¹³ Subsequently, an exclusive echelon of elite, caste dominant “gentleman” artists burgeoned as “intellectual tastemakers” at the colossal expense of artisans.¹⁴ Despite preliminary efforts to integrate them into the student body, artisans were apprehensive about foregoing their more dependable, albeit paltry agricultural earnings for non-remunerative education.¹⁵ Over time, their absence was transferred, disincarnated, and disseminated by illustrated publications circulated at JJ.¹⁶ Hence, in the photographs taken at JJ by Vyarawalla, Nissen, and Singh, displaced migrant workers make spectral appearances as live objects in art education.

Colonial art schools promoted scientific drawing via human anatomy lessons, and for this purpose, plaster casts of Greek sculptures were favored over live models.¹⁷ In the late 1930s, JJ student and photographer Vyarawalla pictured her contemporaries Rehana Mogul and Mani Turner creating a sculpture exemplifying such principles, including clarity of view and precision of measurement (fig. 7). In this striking photograph, Turner (on the far right), bends forward with calipers in hand to ascertain the proportion of her subject’s upper leg. His waist is also cinched with a measuring tape. For Vyarawalla and her classmates, who came from a host of backgrounds, JJ was extolled as an artistic abode for experimentation in photography and freedom for women.¹⁸ It was also projected as the ground for the reinvention of Indian artists, including women, at a time of soaring nationalism in late colonial Bombay.¹⁹ As a female photographer and student, Vyarawalla cancels the male gaze and gives space to her female subjects, downgrading the male model’s status and labor. 

Returning to the photograph, Mogul looks up, decidedly satisfied with her sculpture of the live, male model. While the work is not life-size, it is strategically located within the composition and thereby rendered the tallest figure. Thus, it is given prominence and a larger-than-life stature in the high-ceilinged JJ studio. Just as he posed for hours for the sculpting session, the model was forced to stand still as a photographed subject; nonetheless, he looks straight at the camera, holding our gaze.²⁰

The live model enacts the queries of renowned British industrial design educator Henry Cole (1808–1882). After the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, a world’s fair that heralded the colonial empire as the global pioneer in processing and harboring goods from around the world, Cole interrogated the worth of artisans. He questioned whether artisans should be expected to function as automated machines as per their employers’ demands, whether the commercial aspect of their labor could be compromised for skilled creations, and whether manufacturers recognized this and, moreover, were willing to invest money in educating artisans in order to foster a more skilled labor force.²¹ In figure 7, however, there is a split—the live model, who is no longer an artisan and thus deterritorialized, is at the service of Vyarawalla, Mogul, and Turner’s education. Yet, he does not entirely subdue himself to the machinery of sculpture-making and photography.

Vyarawalla directs a twofold production in which the live model has been relegated to a specimen, while Mogul and Turner are enhanced as artists. The deskilled laborer is utilized as raw material for a sculpture and thereby demarcated from the artists, who pay him no heed. Thus, a neat and graded symmetry unravels itself. While both Mogul and the sculpture as a finished product occupy the foreground, the model and Turner are arranged in the background to demonstrate various stages of sculpting. The two female sculptors are on either side, absorbed and tending to their respective props, one artificial but more exalted than the human male model. 

The model is not lionized like a permanent fixture of JJ, such as the plaster casts of Greek sculptures or the students’ sculpted figurines, but instead beckoned to JJ whenever there is a need for his muted and sampled presence. He represents an eerie and curious amalgam of the “native type” and the Greek ideal but still stands out.²² His look, which evinces personhood and a cynical consciousness, defies and pierces the composition, as he does not conform to an anonymized live model. ²³ His gritty stare reflects the long-standing labor networks of caste, kinship, and village through which single male workers, like him, navigated the workplace and neighborhood in a fluctuating economy.²⁴ In this regard, the long stick that he holds—archetypal of idealized “native type” imagery—comes into view in figure 8.²⁵ The man’s encounter at JJ underpins the grave situation of “mobile incarceration,” whereby badli (temporary) workers would have been picked from designated spots in the city and brought to the school to earn an income.²⁶

A formalist and painterly rendition of a sketching session attended by mostly male students, with a few female students scattered across the class, is framed by Vyarawalla in figure 9.²⁷ In this image, a sari-clad woman seated on a raised platform encircled by the students models with her hands clasped on her lap and her body on silent display. Though this is the only photograph of a live, clothed female model discussed here, women often modeled nude at JJ.²⁸

The Postcolonial Moment

Forty years later, three male students engrave busts modeled after a middle-aged man sitting slouched on a raised platform (fig. 10), a scene captured by Foy Nissen, the prolific photographer, writer, and amateur historian of Bombay who was of Danish origin. This oblique composition captures the static disembodiment of the alienated model, who stares vacantly into a clutter of half-open and half-closed window shutters.²⁹ An unaligned and haphazard path of abject unemployment and deindustrialization stretches out before the live model, whose corporeal presence is as bereft and hollow as the sculptures underway.³⁰ He ekes out a living as an expendable live model, a still life always in supply. At the same time, we can discern some changes in the student composition at JJ in the late 20th century.³¹

In 1955, steps were taken to make the art school more inclusive, with 5 percent of seats reserved for candidates from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds (“Backward Classes”) based on an entrance test.³² Following an arduous struggle by the diverse political base of the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti (Unification of Maharashtra Committee), the State of Maharashtra was formed along linguistic lines, with Bombay as its capital in 1960. However, from the late 1960s onward, the Shiv Sena’s regionalist but wide socioeconomic membership, goaded by its middle-class leadership and driven by increasing financial instability in Bombay, violently advocated for and took direct action to secure ethnicity-based job reservations for the local Marathi population.³³ Since 1970, JJ has instituted monthly scholarships and fee exemptions for students, thus attracting a broader pool of applicants.

However, in 1984, the year in which Nissen’s photograph was shot, Bombay was marked by two imbricated major events: The nationwide imposition of the Emergency (1975–77), when emergency powers were applied across the country, paved the way for the brutal sundering of robust labor politics and history in the city.³⁴ This was ramified by the Great Textile Mill Strike, which accelerated neoliberal reforms.³⁵ After this labor stoppage, mills in the city shuttered, driving more than a hundred thousand workers into casual, informal employment. In this atmosphere of economic uncertainty, scores of disenchanted Marathi workers were galvanized and girded by the right-wing, anti-migrant, and anti-Muslim rhetoric of the Shiv Sena.

Color and a Postmodern Critique 

The pall of deindustrialization hangs heavy in the downcast eyes and static body of the elderly live model captured by Raghubir Singh in figure 11.³⁶ A dire juncture at JJ is presented via this photograph of an emaciated, aging man who, seemingly diminished and disenfranchised, is clad in an oversized kurta, dhoti, and turban. His frail and bent frame is at odds with the plaster casts of classical, nude Greek male sculptures symbolizing Eurocentric ideals of the male form that surround him. Moreover, the color photograph offers an incisive reading of the problematic continuation of this “educational” tradition and artisanal and scholastic disempowerment at JJ well into the late 20th century.³⁷

Singh composed this aberrant scene to unsettle notions of colonial grandeur and to foreground its oppressive hangover in the lackluster confines of JJ. The ongoing, ill-fitting presence at JJ in 1991 of casts of Greek nude sculptures tells us of its unrelenting durée in the postcolonial city. Singh has orchestrated a disharmony between these two teaching aids—the live model, an “ethnographic type” (again holding a stick) of which he was critical, and Greek sculpture—and that of art students, who represent a third category. The students are not portrayed as dutifully immersed in a conventional classroom setting; instead, like the model, they stay on, compelled to “wait” and remain on-site.

The young male student pictured with slumped shoulders and his hands on his back evokes restlessness and unease. He is seemingly caught unawares, despite the reassuring hand of a friend on his shoulder. The intrusive photographer draws us in, setting up a trenchant triangular network of gazes as he inhabits the place of student-artist and intervenes as scathing outsider-spectator—in effect, creating a visual critique that extends beyond the male student in the photograph to encompass the general dissent among students and alumni regarding outmoded education at JJ, among other issues. He constructs a postmodern critique, arresting the apparent friction at JJ by transfixing the male student’s consternation and awkward stance within his own field of view.³⁸ Both the institution and its students faced numerous obstacles well into the 20th century—including the unaffordability of art materials, a dearth of faculty, low attendance, outdated teaching methods, a lack of residential facilities for students, and even an attempt to close the school.³⁹ The apparent wariness of the confounded student and the constrictive environment speak to the repeated demands of students and alumni to revise syllabi, upgrade infrastructure, and introduce English-language tutoring. In the course of time, some of these measures were undertaken.⁴⁰

The continued veneration and aegis of objects over labor at JJ tie together labor and education through the disparate gazes and positions held by the photographed subjects whom Vyarawalla, Nissen, and Singh capture and bring to our attention. Their photographs unfold the dynamics and impact of art education and labor beyond the precincts of the art school, highlighting the convergence of social inequities and the scarcity of resources.⁴¹ They infer a narrative of the reverberating consequences of colonial knowledge and the concomitant making and entrenching of hierarchies, in which the resources necessary for artmaking became privileged enclaves unto their own, with hardly any public or private intervention. The indigent labor of the city has continued to serve as live models well into the present day, as demonstrated by photographs on JJ’s website (figs. 1a and 1b).⁴² Disaggregated, disarmed, and appropriated by art schools, artmaking, and the accumulation of capital in the city at large, the below-minimum wages paid to said live models were recently upgraded.⁴³

The JJ studio portraits encapsulate interconnected points of disproportionate modernity in a city teetering on the precipice of chronic unrest. They are distinct traces enunciating the poignant state of affairs within the school’s lofty walls and sunlit, capacious interiors for live models and students. Though monumental scale allows for the bodily autonomy of labor and studenthood in Vyarawalla and Singh’s photos (figs. 7, 8, and 11), in figure 9, by Vyarawalla, they are dwarfed and made a diminutive spectacle of. The photos by Nissen and Singh (figs. 10 and 11) show a consistent decline in both sitters. Together, as apparitions, they carry the burden of coerced historical experience, enduring the industrial capital model upon leaving a stagnant rural economy. Thus, the drawn-out process of mill closures, the protracted affair of deterritorialization and depoliticization of the urban poor, and the hastening of liberalization and right-wing propaganda—enabled by the Emergency—were inextricably coterminous with the pedagogical inertia of JJ. ⁴⁴

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The concept of establishing a museum in a remote region of India—one that is not only geographically isolated but also prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes and cyclones—presents a complex set of challenges. Yet, it also offers a rare opportunity to engage deeply with the traditional knowledge systems of local communities. Located in Ajrakhpur, just outside the city of Bhuj in Kutch, Gujarat, in western India, the Living and Learning Design Centre (LLDC), founded in 2016, exemplifies this duality (fig. 1). Conceived as a multipurpose cultural institution, LLDC is dedicated to the preservation, revival, and continuity of the diverse craft traditions of Kutch.¹ Situated on a nine-acre campus, it houses three galleries as well as craft studios and educational spaces that collectively serve as a platform for cultural transmission and innovation.

Tracing the development of LLDC, this essay focuses on how indigenous systems of knowledge informed its planning, construction, collections, infrastructure, and modes of audience engagement. Using LLDC as a case study, it explores how the model of a global museum can be thoughtfully translated to a local context—one that is shaped by environmental precarity, cultural richness, and community resilience.

Building Trust: The Elders as Gatekeepers of Knowledge

The seed of the Living and Learning Design Centre was planted more than five decades ago in a chance encounter between the late Chanda Shroff (1933–2016) and women from the Ahir and Meghwaad Gurjar communities.² In 1969, Shroff traveled overland from Bombay (present-day Mumbai) to Dhaneti in Kutch to assist with famine-relief efforts.³ For the fifth consecutive year, Kutch—the second largest district in India—was experiencing severe drought that had resulted in an acute need for humanitarian assistance as many residents faced starvation. Despite these hardships, women arriving to collect food aid remained impeccably dressed and were hesitant to accept charity. They had nothing to exchange for the food parcels they received as they had sold most of their belongings—including valuable embroidered heirlooms passed down through generations—just to survive. 

Their pride and skills caught the attention of Shroff. Recognizing the need for a long-term solution, she asked if they would create embroidered designs on plain saris that she would then sell in Bombay, returning the proceeds of any sales directly to them. The women agreed to participate under the condition that the patterns and motifs would be outlined by Parmaben Balasara, an aarekhni artist and their designated designer.⁴ This was Shroff’s initiation into how traditional crafts, such as embroideries, were not just borne from women who sat in their homes and created them, but rather from a regulated system that relied on the wisdom and knowledge of elders from their community. Without the support of Parmaben, Shroff could not have engaged these communities (fig. 2), and it was through her steadfast support that the initial seeds were planted for LLDC, building trust with the communities through their first organization, Shrujan.⁵

Engaging Communities: The Need for a Mobile Museum

In the late 1990s, Chanda Shroff launched a precursor to the Living and Learning Design Centre through an innovative mobile museum housed in a repurposed bus, initially named the Design Center On Wheels. This initiative was instrumental in introducing the concept of a museum to the rural craft communities of Kutch, many of whom had limited exposure to formal cultural institutions. Rather than imposing an external model, the mobile museum served as a dialogic platform—demonstrating how a museum could emerge from within the community’s own knowledge systems.

The Design Center On Wheels featured a rotating display of specially commissioned panels and garments, showcasing traditional patterns and techniques in contemporary formats, all painstakingly hand-stitched by women from the various communities of Kutch (figs. 3–6) 

Encouraging the use of traditional stitches in a modern color palette and moving beyond clothing and textiles were crucial steps in teaching the women how, through the eye of a needle, to reinvigorate and expand their cultural histories using their own knowledge and experience. Between 1997 – 2003 they created over 1000 embroidered panels and over 600 garments, in a range of designs and colorways, establishing a rich visual archive of stitches and motifs. From 2003 to 2012 the Design Center On Wheels travelled across Kutch, exhibiting a rotating selection of these panels. This mobile museum not only documented craft heritage, but it also inspired renewed interest among younger generations, who began to see their cultural practices as valuable and evolving (figs. 5, 6). 

By visiting more than 100 villages and engaging more than 20,000 community members, the mobile museum played a critical role in the instruction, retention, and revitalization of an intangible cultural heritage. It laid the groundwork for LLDC’s later development by fostering a sense of ownership and participation among artisans and by demonstrating that museums could be truly inclusive and rooted in lived experience.

In 2006, Chanda Shroff was honored with the international Rolex Award for Enterprise for preserving, protecting, and safeguarding the unique embroidery heritage of Kutch and for empowering rural craftswomen. Her pioneering efforts were recognized as “one of the most successful models of social entrepreneurship in her country.”⁶

Building the Living and Learning Design Centre

With the support of the prestigious Rolex award, Chanda Shroff advanced her vision by establishing the Living and Learning Design Centre in Ajrakhpur—a village founded by the Khatri community after the devastating 2001 earthquake in Kutch. The Khatris, renowned for their intricate ajrakh block printing, had previously lived in the village of Dhamadka.⁷ However, the earthquake altered that village’s natural water sources, changing their mineral composition, which negatively affected the quality of the dyes produced there. Seeking better conditions, many Khatris relocated to Ajrakhpur, a site near Bhuj with a more suitable water supply for their craft.

Recognizing the potential of this new site, the Khatris encouraged Shroff to consider acquiring land in the same area, which subsequently led to the procurement of the plot. The location was selected not only for its proximity to the artisans but also for its potential to host a multifunctional campus. Through a process of community dialogue and environmental assessment, the land was eventually prepared for construction. Importantly, the acquisition of this property involved ongoing community collaboration and consultation, outlining the vision and plans for the site, ensuring that the initiative was embraced as a collective effort rather than an external imposition.

The acquisition of the land marked a pivotal transition for LLDC—from mobile outreach to a permanent institutional presence. It signaled a long-term commitment to the region and laid the foundation for a built environment that reflects the values of resilience, inclusivity, and cultural continuity. By embedding the institution within the living context of one of Kutch’s most iconic craft traditions—ajrakh—LLDC reinforced its mission to support and sustain artisan life through meaningful, place-based cultural infrastructure.

The architectural design of LLDC had to emphasize structural resilience, incorporating earthquake-resistant technologies alongside vernacular building practices. In doing so, it addressed environmental risks while maintaining the region’s architectural heritage. The design team, working with local engineers and artisans, aimed to ensure the building could withstand future seismic activity.

Locally sourced materials were combined with reinforced structural systems to create a hybrid approach that enhanced durability while preserving cultural continuity. The campus layout—including galleries, studios, and open courtyards—was designed to support rainwater harvesting and to optimize natural ventilation and lighting, thus reducing reliance on mechanical systems and promoting environmental sustainability. For thermal stability, the design team used bricks made from lime and fly ash. Lime mortar was prepared on-site by grinding lime with sand and cement, and this gauged mortar was used for the masonry work. Natural lime plaster, applied using traditional methods, was used in the interiors of two galleries.⁸

Although Kutch experiences a predominantly hot and arid climate, winter nights can be very cold. To regulate temperature extremes, the building plan incorporates passive cooling strategies. Fenestrations of varying sizes on the west and south sides allow winter sunlight while minimizing summer heat and enhancing ventilation. Shaded passageways offer cooler zones, and rainwater harvesting tanks collect approximately 500,000 liters annually, supplemented by onsite wastewater management.

By embedding resilience into its architecture, LLDC exemplifies how cultural institutions can be both context-sensitive and future-ready. The building itself serves as a pedagogical tool, demonstrating how indigenous knowledge and modern engineering can converge to create spaces that are safe, sustainable, and symbolically rich.

Documenting the Collections 

Alongside the building of the Living and Learning Design Centre, work was begun on documenting the collections in readiness for the gallery displays. Of particular importance were the specially commissioned embroidered panels initiated through the Design Center On Wheels. Each piece was systematically photographed and catalogued, including details such as the maker’s name, community affiliation, and pattern type, preserving the unique identities and cultural significance of each motif, such as the scorpion at the midway point on either side of the central medallion in figure 5. Oral interviews were conducted in Kutchi—a dialect that has no written script—and were later translated into Gujarati and then English. These interview transcripts were also digitized to ensure comprehensive recordkeeping. This time-consuming process could only be overseen through locally recruited teams composed of members of the communities themselves. In doing so, LLDC has been able to capture and contextualize some of the region’s most intricate embroidery as markers of its ecosystems and holistic way of living, heralding a break from previous museological practices. Importantly, many of the team at LLDC are multilingual and have the advantage of being able to speak Kutchi. By sitting with the community members, sharing food, and listening to intergenerational stories of how their crafts have changed over time, they have slowly collected facts, piecing them together over days, months, and years. To date, the communities that are being documented (an ongoing process with varying degrees of completion) are the Ahir (within which are the subgroups of Pranthadiya, Machhoya, Boricha), Meghwaad Gurjar, Sodha and Jadeja, Rabaari (including the subgroups Debariya, Kaachhi, Vagadiya, and Bhopa), Meghwaad Maaru, Jat (Garasiya, Danetah, Fakirani, and Haajani), Rau Node, Mutwa, and Halepotra. 

By actively recruiting staff from within these communities, LLDC has been able to ensure and conserve a granular level of knowledge that has been authentically verified at each stage. This practice remains ongoing, safeguarding cultural heritage through grassroots representation and local expertise. Additionally, the collection continues to expand through the acquisition and donations of personal traditional garments and artifacts from the communities as well as those made for commercial sale and the repatriation of antique garments and crafts from Kutch, previously held in Western public and private collections.

Storing the Collections

The collections at the Living and Learning Design Centre are housed in purpose-built, specialized facilities, with the natural materials of the building and construction serving as active agents, conducive to regulating the temperature and light levels. To ensure the collections are protected from pest infestations, natural preventive methods that use local indigenous insect-repelling herbs are employed. Since traditional Western materials like Melinex are unsuitable for the climate, finely woven unbleached cotton and herb-filled pouches are placed within the storage units, and to minimize contamination, visitors and staff must enter barefoot: No outside footwear is allowed inside the archive.⁹

Programming at the Living and Learning Design Centre

The Craft Studio and Hands-On gallery at LLDC serve as dynamic spaces for the transmission, experimentation, and celebration of Kutch’s rich craft traditions. Designed not merely as a production unit but also as pedagogical and collaborative environments, these spaces facilitate a range of activities bridging traditional knowledge and contemporary practice.

Workshops are regularly conducted in the Hands-On gallery, bringing together master artisans, apprentices, students, and visiting designers. These sessions focus on skills transmission, enabling younger generations to learn intricate techniques such as ajrakh block printing, embroidery, felting, spinning, weaving, and dyeing. The studio also functions as a site for experimentation, as a place in which artisans are encouraged to innovate with materials, motifs, and forms while remaining rooted in traditional aesthetics.

Community engagement is central to the Craft Studio’s ethos. Local residents and artisans are invited to observe and participate in open-studio days, fostering a sense of shared ownership and cultural pride. Collaborative projects with design institutions and nongovernmental organizations create opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue and economic empowerment. Through its multifaceted programming, the Craft Studio and Hands-On gallery exemplify LLDC’s mission to sustain living traditions by embedding them in spaces of learning, creativity, and community interaction.

Currently, there are approximately 30 active crafts in Kutch, encompassing textiles, vegetal materials, metals, and pottery. Each craft is maintained and utilized, with traditional techniques adapted to suit the available natural resources. LLDC includes these practices as a central aspect of its programming.

Throughout the year, various programs take place, featuring live and performing arts such as dance, drama, music, and film screenings as well as academic conferences and award ceremonies that recognize the work of local artisans. The Winter Festival is an annual major event bringing together traditional craft communities from across India.

Sustaining the Longevity of Craft: Community and Cultural Resilience

The Living and Learning Design Centre offers a compelling model for rethinking museum practice in rural and environmentally sensitive contexts. The pioneering work of the late Chanda Shroff continues under the leadership of her daughter, Ami Shroff. By integrating indigenous knowledge systems into its architectural design, curatorial strategies, and community engagement, LLDC challenges conventional museological frameworks that often prioritize static preservation over dynamic cultural continuity. Its establishment reflects a deliberate effort to create a space that is not only resilient to seismic and climatic disruptions but also responsive to the sociocultural fabric of the region.

The Centre’s infrastructure—characterized by its use of local materials, vernacular construction techniques, and participatory planning—demonstrates a contextually grounded approach to sustainability and resilience. Furthermore, LLDC’s hybrid functionality as a museum, educational hub, and craft studio positions it as a site of both cultural preservation and economic empowerment. It facilitates intergenerational knowledge transfer and supports the livelihoods of artisans engaged in traditional crafts such as embroidery, weaving, and block printing (to name but a few), each one a complex and historically rich practice unique to the region.

In translating a global institutional model into a locally embedded framework, LLDC contributes to a broader discourse on culturally responsive heritage infrastructure. It underscores the importance of ecological sensitivity, community participation, and cultural specificity in the development of museums that serve not only as repositories of history but also as living systems of learning and innovation. As such, LLDC offers valuable insights for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers seeking to design inclusive and resilient cultural institutions in the Global South.

This essay stems from the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) Bombay/Mumbai initiative at MoMA. The 2024-2026 Bombay/Mumbai research program was conceived and organized by Ananya Sikand (C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai Fellow) and Lucy Gallun (Curator, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography). Read more about C-MAP here.

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The following essay by art historian Talita Trizoli reveals the influence of a Catholic and spiritual pathos in the work of influential though relatively unknown Brazilian critic Maria Eugênia Franco. Taking as case studies Franco’s writings on artists such as Samson Flexor, Henri Michaux, and Mestre Nosa and artworks attributed to unrecognized Baroque artisans, Trizoli establishes a direct relationship between Catholic motifs and the development of modernity in Brazilian art and identities.

Religion is eminently social. Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities; the rites are a manner of acting which take rise in the midst of the assembled groups and which are destined to excite, maintain, or recreate certain mental states in those groups. —Emile Durkheim¹

Between 1948 and 1954, Brazilian art critic and curator Maria Eugênia Franco (1915–1999) had a regular column in O Estado de São Paulo, a real achievement given this newspaper, and several others, was marked by misogyny and conservative values.²Over the course of seven years, Franco offered commentary and analyses, predominantly about the art circuit in São Paulo, in addition to lucid criticism of the systemic aspect of the milieu and formal observations on the work of specific artists, most of whom were contemporary.³

Still relatively unfamiliar to the general public, Franco’s critical writings allow us to understand miscellaneous efforts in the modern Latin American context to reconcile form and content—a conflict inherent to aesthetic programs in their various versions and a recurring theme in Brazilian art criticism.⁴

A large part of Franco’s critical work deals with artists and artistic events on the so-called Rio–São Paulo axis, raising structural issues surrounding the organization of the Brazilian art circuit, mainly as it relates to audience formation and cultural institutions.⁵ In terms of the selection of articles commented upon here, the content concerns sacred themes explored by Brazilian artists not only as an object of formal exercise but also as a representation of an affective memory linked to the construction of national identity, since figures dear to popular culture and religious festivals, in this case saints and passages from the life of Christ, have been chosen to allegorize reality in Brazil. 

Embedded in the constitution of Brazilian national identity, the mystical narratives of Catholicism, a fundamental element of Portuguese colonization, formed a set of folkloric entities in the collective imagination that mixed with the mythologies of the various original Indigenous peoples and the shamanic practices of the African subjects exiled by the slave regime. Although the poetic and violent encounter between these cultures generated a rich symbolic ensemble, the Catholic-Apostolic-Roman structure remained the organizing imperative of Brazilian culture.⁶

Coming from a Catholic family, like most of the Brazilian population at the time, Franco was familiar with Christian religious “mysteries” even though she was not a practicing Catholic.⁷Indeed, from the Barroco Mineiro, or Baroque of Minas Gerais, chosen as the first artistic manifestation of the Brazilian spirit, to the religious calendar of collective festivals and the obvious predominance of biblical passages in the history of art, some knowledge of Christian mysticism was almost inevitable.⁸

For Franco, the mystery of the Catholic religious experience emerged as a theme already widely recognized in the artistic sphere rather than as an element of amazement or one of discovery. This aspect can also be seen in the artistic production of her sister, painter Maria Leontina (1917–1984), especially in a series of abstracted representations of Saint Anne (figs. 1, 2) and in banners she presented as objects of scrutiny for the application of chromatic nuance and composition inspired by Giorgio Morandi.⁹

Committed to remaining professionally impartial, Franco did not write frequently about the work of her sister or brother-in-law, Milton Dacosta (1915–1988), who was also a painter. (Rather, her exchanges with both frequently took place in person or through letters). She dedicated some of her columns, however, to the work of partner artists in which the sacred theme is manifested alongside formal investigation and dramatic Christian narratives (the mystical pathos), which are mobilized for the sentimental education of the spectator.¹⁰Of these texts, an analysis of artist Samson Flexor (1907–1971) and his work in the article “Flexor e a arte religiosa” (“Flexor and Religious Art”) is significant.¹¹

Flexor was born in Moldova, in the city of Soroca, but after traveling through Brussels and Paris, he settled permanently in Brazil in 1948. Having earned a degree in painting from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and studying art history at the Sorbonne—in addition to holding a degree in chemistry, which he had previously earned in Brussels—Flexor was an artist who was intellectual about his own work.¹²He is considered among the pioneers of abstraction in Brazil, mainly after critical contact with Belgian art critic Léon Degand (1907–1958), first director of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM) and an advocate of abstraction. It is important to highlight that Flexor was in no way a defender of a dogmatic and protocol-based artistic practice; indeed, he believed in the affective and dramatic dimensions of art—as can be seen in his clashes with members of the Concrete art movement, whom he nicknamed “Concretinos” (a mixture of “concrete” and “cretins” in Portuguese).¹³

It is from this sense of religious pathos that Franco approached Flexor’s work. In her article about the artist, Maria Eugênia highlights two solo exhibitions on display in São Paulo, one at Galeria Domus, the other at MAM. She foregrounds Flexor’s technical dexterity and emphasizes his character as a “subject painter,” highlighting the eleven paintings in the series Composições sobre temas da Paixão (Compositions on Themes of the Passion) at MAM. These canvases, with their Cubo-Expressionist treatment of forms and their icy hues, warm blues, and earth tones, represent passages from Christ’s martyrdom, evoking the most moving moments of his suffering and cathartic self-denial (figs. 3–5). 

It is noteworthy that Flexor was born into a Jewish family but converted to Catholicism in France. After the death of his first wife, Tatiana Yablokof, during childbirth, the painter received spiritual guidance and professional support from local priests, who commissioned the grieving artist to produce several frescoes based on biblical events. From then on, biblical passages, with an emphasis on Christ’s crucifixion at Calvary, would be a recurring theme in his work, even in later life, when his artistic focus became more personal (though nonetheless tragic).¹⁴Maria Eugênia comments in her article on the artist: 

Catholic culture has been predominant in Brazil since the territory was colonized, even determining its later structure as an empire and democracy—despite the modern premise of a secular state within the Enlightenment model.¹⁶As far as the artistic world is concerned, the use of mystical drama in sacred art is both a means of catalyzing attention and a strong empathic device in the narrative of suffering and sacrifice in the name of transcendence—not for nothing, the choice of certain passages and figures from the Bible to consolidate values or reformulate contingencies is recurrent in representations. I consider this condition an example of the intense presence in Brazilian culture of variants of Our Lady—widely used as a resource for appeasing and welcoming the suffering of the population—but also the symbolic correlation of Christ martyred on the cross with the figure of Brazilian national hero Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, known as Tiradentes, who in 1792, became the only member of the revolutionary Inconfidência Mineira to be arrested, tried for treason, and publicly dismembered.¹⁷

The search for a dramatic dimension to the Christian mystery is a problem inherent to Maria Eugênia Franco’s critical analyses of artists other than Flexor, but without the loss of focus on the formal and systemic structuring aspect of the milieu. These dramatic, almost passionate elements identified by not only Franco but also fellow writers such as Geraldo Ferraz (1905–1979) and Clarival do Prado Valladares (1918–1983) are reminiscent of the expressionist influence of immigrant artists established in Brazil and their pupils.¹⁸ Moreover, they are applied to the thematic treatment of scenes typical of the country, as is the case in works by Lasar Segall (1889–1957), Cândido Portinari (1903–1962), and Oswaldo Goeldi (1895–1961), among others. Its use by Flexor, but also by painter and poet Henri Michaux (1899–1984), as we will see later through Franco’s perspective, is linked to the experience of collective human suffering during World War II. 

In Franco’s article about Henri Michaux’s watercolors, written during her French stay, one can see by the use of adjectives and a certain psychologizing analysis, her effort to narrate the dimension of anguish and fascinating displacement in the artist’s images, with their washes and autonomist drawing techniques (figs. 6, 7).¹⁹Michaux, of Belgian origin and naturalized French, is still known today for his dramatic forms and investigations of human suffering, which are poetically enhanced by manifestations of the unconscious in the form of dreams and numbing delusions. Portraits and self-portraits made with watercolor stains and thin, tense lines of ink that overlap, forming a suspended plot on the white of the paper, indicate the artist’s proximity to Surrealism or even Dadaism. However, the artist distanced himself from the uncontrolled aspects of these isms, as he was interested in the fissure of human subjectivity, the feeling of lack of belonging intensified by the experience of war.²⁰
Franco describes the paintings on display at the gallery as follows: 

It is interesting that in her articles on Flexor and Michaux, Franco emphasizes the relationship between studies of form and those of composition as they pertain to the dramatic and psychic demands of subject matter. This theme was already present in 1944 in her article²²on the statuary ensemble in Ouro Preto by Antônio Francisco Lisboa (popularly known as Aleijadinho, 1738–1814), her first aesthetic essay, and it is repeated in later articles on the mythical artist and the importance of the Baroque in the constitution of Brazil’s colonial artistic fortune.²³  

Referencing the studies of Mário de Andrade (1893–1945), pioneer in identifying the Baroque of Minas Gerais as the first sui generis Brazilian artistic style, Franco points out the artistic and historical importance of the figure of the crippled craftsman, who suffered like Christ, and calls for a greater presence of his work and state support for its circulation.²⁴In a typed manuscript now in the personal archive of her nephew Alexandre Dacosta, Franco describes an unofficial tour of the Minas Gerais museum complex in 1944.²⁵She writes:

Franco continues her essay with an emotional and qualitative description of the oratorio in question, but what is striking about this youthful text is the description of the scourging of Jesus on the Way of the Cross. As a dramatic, political, and formal exercise, this theme is an exhaustive one for artists, and Franco addressed it repeatedly in her criticism.²⁷The passages of suffering, violence, commotion, and welcome, consisting of fourteen stations, provide a narrative of emotional purging for the faithful, whereby the aim is both to grow closer to the divine through mystical experience and to obtain indulgence for moral failings—in this sense, the formal solution of the unknown artist of the oratory, of begging, of carving the small polychrome figures on a blue background in a narrative of ascendancy through the sacrifice of the son of God, reinforces the idea of ascension and transcendence through the experience of violence.

In 1969, Franco undertook her last public analysis of a sacred and popular representation of Christ’s Calvary, this time not in a newspaper column but rather in an essay published in a limited edition of woodcuts by Mestre Nosa.²⁸The artist from Ceará, whose baptismal name was Inocêncio Miguel da Costa Nick (1897–1983), had recently arrived in São Paulo and was a prominent figure in the movement for the marketing and appreciation of popular culture. His set of fifteen prints, first commissioned by artist Sérvulo Esmeraldo (1929–2017) and then published in two limited editions—the first in France in 1965 by editor Robert Morel through Esmeraldo, and the second in 1969 by editor Julio Pacello—fueled that frisson of the “primitive,” “innocent,” and “pure” of so-called popular art. Franco’s text reinforces these notions of vernacular artistic production but adds her own set of aesthetic predicates referring to the sacred and formal sphere:

It is interesting that in her critical analysis of the oratorio and of Nosa’s woodcuts, Franco emphasizes the ingenuity of the formal solutions in the face of so-called simplistic representations of a classic and consecrated religious theme in the Christian context. The Way of the Cross and the suffering endured by Jesus have historically been mobilized as moralizing devices for the masses, among whom material self-denial and physical submission constitute an imperative condition for the ascension of the spirit—especially amid economic fragility and political turmoil, as was the case during Franco’s time as an arts professional in the critical and curatorial sectors. Whether under the dictatorial New State (Estado Novo; 1937–45) during the rule of Getúlio Vargas or under later military dictatorship (1964–85), artistic productions of a religious nature had, dubiously, the public function of cultural familiarity and of creating critical metaphors for social causes.

However, with regard to this set of articles by Maria Eugênia Franco, religious themes in Brazilian modern art are a bastion of the constitution of national identity, an aspect of obsession in the late modern generation of the Return to Order. Franco seems to have made a circle of eternal return, albeit indirectly and tangentially, to the mystical Christian realm amid her own struggles to construct the artistic environment and the aesthetic-educational formation of the public³⁰ (synthesis of form with content, synthesis of artistic investigative practice, and the dramatization of affections), even though today she is barely remembered by her peers.

Portuguese

O seguinte ensaio da historiadora da arte Talita Trizoli revela a influência de um pathos católico e espiritual na obra da influente, embora relativamente desconhecida, crítica brasileira Maria Eugênia Franco. Tomando como estudos de caso os escritos de Franco sobre artistas como Samson Flexor, Henri Michaux e Mestre Nosa e obras atribuídas a artesãos barrocos não reconhecidos, Trizoli estabelece uma relação direta entre motivos católicos e o desenvolvimento da modernidade na arte e identidades brasileiras.

[…] la religion est une chose éminemment sociale. Les représentations religieuses sont des représentations collectives qui expriment des réalités collectives; les rites sont des manières d’agir qui ne prennent naissance qu’au sein des groupes assemblés et qui sont destinés à susciter, à entretenir ou à refaire certains états mentaux de ces groupes³¹ ― Émile Durkeim 

Entre 1948 e 1954, a crítica de arte, gestora e curadora brasileira Maria Eugênia Franco (1915–1999) teve uma coluna regular de crítica de arte no jornal O Estado de São Paulo, um verdadeiro feito, considerando que este jornal, assim como vários outros, era marcado pela misoginia e pelos valores conservadores.³²Ao longo de sete anos, Franco teceu comentários e análises predominantemente sobre o circuito artístico de artes na capital paulista, além de apresentar críticas lúcidas no aspecto sistêmico do meio e observações formais sobre a produção artística, em sua maioria, contemporânea.³³

Ainda pouco conhecida do grande público, a produção crítica de Franco possibilita compreender os esforços de miscelânea entre forma e conteúdo no âmbito moderno latino-americano, um conflito inerente aos programas estéticos em suas diversas versões e um tema recorrente na crítica de arte brasileira.³⁴

Grande parte da obra crítica de Franco aborda artistas e eventos artísticos do chamado eixo Rio-São Paulo, levantando questões estruturais em torno da organização do circuito artístico brasileiro, principalmente no que se refere à formação de público e às instituições culturais.³⁵Em termos da seleção dos artigos aqui comentados, o conteúdo diz respeito a temas sagrados explorados pelos artistas brasileiros não apenas como objeto de exercício formal, mas também como representação de uma memória afetiva vinculada à construção da identidade nacional, uma vez que figuras caras à cultura popular e às festas religiosas, no caso santos e passagens da vida de Cristo, foram escolhidas para alegorizar a realidade brasileira.³⁶

Incrustadas na constituição da identidade nacional brasileira, as narrativas místicas do catolicismo, elemento fundamental da colonização portuguesa, formaram um conjunto de entidades folclóricas no imaginário coletivo que se misturam às mitologias dos diversos povos indígenas originários e às práticas xamânicas dos súditos africanos exilados pelo regime escravista. Embora o encontro poético e violento entre essas culturas tenha gerado um rico conjunto simbólico, a estrutura católico-apostólico-romana permaneceu como o imperativo organizador da cultura brasileira.

Vinda de uma família católica, como a maioria da população brasileira da época, Franco estava familiarizada com os “mistérios” religiosos cristãos, embora não fosse católica praticante.³⁷De fato, do Barroco Mineiro, ou Barroco de Minas Gerais, escolhido como a primeira manifestação artística do espírito brasileiro, ao calendário religioso de festas coletivas e à óbvia predominância de passagens bíblicas na história da arte, algum conhecimento do misticismo cristão era quase inevitável.³⁸

Para Franco, o mistério da experiência religiosa católica surgiu como um tema já amplamente reconhecido na esfera artística, em vez de um elemento de espanto ou descoberta. Esse aspecto também pode ser visto na produção artística de sua irmã, a pintora Maria Leontina (1917–1984), especialmente em uma série de representações abstratas de Santa Ana (figs. 1, 2) e em faixas que ela apresentou como objetos de escrutínio para a aplicação de nuance cromática e composição inspiradas por Giorgio Morandi.³⁹

Comprometida em permanecer profissionalmente imparcial, Franco não escrevia frequentemente sobre o trabalho de sua irmã ou cunhado, Milton Dacosta (1915–1988), que também era pintor. (Em vez disso, suas trocas com ambos frequentemente ocorriam pessoalmente ou por meio de cartas). Ela dedicou algumas de suas colunas, no entanto, ao trabalho de artistas parceiros nos quais o tema sagrado se manifesta ao lado da investigação formal e das narrativas cristãs dramáticas (o pathos místico), que são mobilizadas para a educação sentimental do espectador.⁴⁰Destes textos, destaca-se a análise do artista Samson Flexor (1907–1971) e sua obra no artigo “Flexor e a arte religiosa”.⁴¹

Flexor nasceu na Moldávia, na cidade de Soroca, e após trânsito por Bruxelas e Paris, estabeleceu-se em definitivo no Brasil em 1948. Com formação em pintura pela Belas Artes de Paris, mas também com passagens pela Sorbonne na área de história, e uma formação prévia em Química em Bruxelas, Flexor foi um artista intelectualizado sobre a própria obra.⁴²Ele é considerado um dos percursores da abstração no Brasil, principalmente após contato crítico com o primeiro diretor do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, o belga Léon Degan (1907-1958), partidário da abstração. É Importante frisar que o artista não era de modo algum defensor de uma prática artística dogmática e protocolar, pois acreditava na dimensão afetiva e dramática da obra de arte – como se pode ver nos seus confrontos com os membros do movimento da arte concreta, a quem apelidou de “Concretinos”.⁴³

É a partir desse dispositivo dramático que Franco se aproxima da obra de Flexor. No referido artigo de 25 de abril de 1940, Maria Eugênia nomeia duas mostras individuais do artista em cartaz na cidade, uma na galeria Domus, outra no Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. Ela coloca em primeiro plano sua destreza técnica e pontuar seu caráter de “pintor de assunto”, mas dando destaque ao conjunto presente no MAM, “Composições sobre temas da Paixão”. Essas telas, com seu tratamento cubo-expressionista das formas e seus tons gelados, azuis quentes e tons de terra, representam passagens do martírio de Cristo, evocando os momentos mais comoventes de seu sofrimento e autonegação catártica (figs. 3–5).

Vale notar que, Flexor nasceu em uma família judia, mas converteu-se ao catolicismo na França após a morte de sua 1ª esposa no parto, Tatiana Yablokof, e o respectivo acolhimento espiritual e profissional de padres, os quais encomendaram diversos afrescos sobre eventos bíblicos para o artista em luto. As passagens bíblicas de Cristo, com ênfase em seu calvário, seriam então um tema recorrente para Flexor, mesmo quando o artista adentra a uma produção tardia mais pessoal, mas também trágica.⁴⁴ Maria Eugênia comenta que:

A predominância imperativa da cultura católica no Brasil ocorre desde a colonização do território, determinando inclusive sua posterior estruturação como império e democracia — apesar da premissa moderna de um Estado laico dentro do modelo iluminista.⁴⁶No que se refere ao mundo artístico, o uso do drama místico na arte sacra é ao mesmo tempo um meio de catalisar a atenção e um forte recurso empático na narrativa do sofrimento e do sacrifício em nome da transcendência — não à toa, a escolha de certas passagens e figuras da Bíblia para consolidar valores ou reformular contingências é recorrente nas representações. Podemos considerar como exemplo dessa condição a intensa presença na cultura brasileira de variantes de Nossa Senhora — amplamente utilizadas como recurso para apaziguar e acolher o sofrimento da população —, mas também da correlação simbólica de Cristo martirizado na cruz com a figura do herói nacional brasileiro Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, conhecido como Tiradentes, que, em 1792, tornou-se o único integrante da revolucionária Inconfidência Mineira a ser preso, julgado por traição e esquartejado publicamente.⁴⁷

A busca por uma dimensão dramática no mistério cristão é objeto que tangencia as analises críticas de Maria Eugênia Franco em alguns artistas para além de Flexor, mas sem a perda de foco do aspecto estruturante formal e sistêmico do meio. Esses elementos dramáticos, quase apaixonados, identificados não apenas por Franco, mas também por outros escritores como Geraldo Ferraz (1905–1979) e Clarival do Prado Valladares (1918–1983) lembram a influência expressionista de artistas imigrantes estabelecidos no Brasil e seus alunos.⁴⁸Além disso, são aplicadas ao tratamento temático de cenas típicas do país, como é o caso de obras de Lasar Segall (1889–1957), Cândido Portinari (1903–1962) e Oswaldo Goeldi (1895–1961), entre outros. Seu uso por Flexor, mas também pelo pintor e poeta Henri Michaux (1899–1984), como veremos mais adiante pela perspectiva de Franco, está ligado à experiência do sofrimento humano coletivo durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial.

No artigo de Franco sobre as aquarelas de Henri Michaux, escrito durante sua estadia na França, percebe-se, pelo uso de adjetivos e uma certa análise psicologizante, seu esforço em narrar a dimensão de angústia e deslocamento fascinante nas imagens da artista, com suas aguadas e técnicas de desenho autonomistas (figs. 6, 7).⁴⁹Michaux, de origem belga e naturalizado francês, é conhecido até hoje por suas formas dramáticas e investigações sobre o sofrimento humano, poeticamente potencializadas por manifestações do inconsciente em forma de sonhos e delírios entorpecentes. Retratos e autorretratos feitos com manchas de aquarela e linhas finas e tensas de tinta que se sobrepõem, formando uma trama suspensa sobre o branco do papel, indicam a proximidade do artista com o surrealismo ou mesmo com o dadaísmo. No entanto, o artista se distanciou dos aspectos descontrolados desses ismos, pois se interessava pela fissura da subjetividade humana, o sentimento de falta de pertencimento intensificado pela experiência da guerra.⁵⁰Franco descreve as pinturas em exposição na galeria da seguinte forma:

É pertinente notar que em ambos os artigos sobre Flexor e Michaux, Franco coloca ênfase na interlocução entre os estudos de forma e composição em relação a demanda dramática e psíquica do tema dos artistas. Esse aspecto já se encontra presente no primeiro ensaio estético da autora em 1944⁵² sobre o conjunto estatuário na cidade de Ouro Preto de Antonio Francisco Lisboa (1738-1814), popularmente conhecido como o Aleijadinho de Vila Rica, e que se repetirá nos artigos posteriores sobre o mítico artista e a importância do barroco brasileiro na constituição da fortuna artística colonial no Brasil.⁵³

Tendo como referência nomeada os estudos de Mario de Andrade (1893-1945), precursor do indicativo do barroco mineiro como a primeira manifestação artística brasileira sui generis, Franco aponta tanto a importância artística e histórica da figura do artesão aleijado, sofredor como cristo, clamando juntamente por uma maior presença e apoio estatal para a circulação de suas obras.⁵⁴Em texto datilografado presente no acervo pessoal de seu sobrinho, há o seguinte material produzido dentro de uma excursão extraoficial de averiguação do complexo mineiro de museus⁵⁵ em 1944: 

Franco segue com um descritivo afetivo e qualitativo do oratório em questão, mas o que chama atenção nesse texto de juventude é a repetição do episódio dos flagelos de Jesus na Via Sacra. Como exercício dramático, político e formal, este tema é exaustivo para os artistas, e Franco abordou-o repetidamente na sua crítica.⁵⁷As passagens de sofrimento, violência, comoção e boas-vindas, compostas por quatorze estações, fornecem uma narrativa de purificação emocional para os fiéis, cujo objetivo é tanto aproximar-se do divino por meio da experiência mística quanto obter indulgência por falhas morais — nesse sentido, a solução formal do artista desconhecido do oratório, da mendicância, da escultura de pequenas figuras policromadas sobre fundo azul em uma narrativa de ascendência por meio do sacrifício do filho de Deus, reforça a ideia de ascensão e transcendência por meio da experiência da violência.

Em 1969, Franco empreendeu sua última análise pública de uma representação sagrada e popular do Calvário de Cristo, desta vez não em uma coluna de jornal, mas sim em um ensaio publicado em uma edição limitada de xilogravuras de Mestre Nosa⁵⁸ (ou Noza, variando a grafia). O artista cearense recém chegado a São Paulo, cujo nome de batismo era Inocêncio Miguel da Costa Nick (1897-1983), foi figura de destaque no movimento de valorização mercadológica da cultura popular, e seu conjunto de 15 imagens primeiramente encomendas pelo artista Sérvulo Esmeraldo, e depois editadas limitadamente em duas ocasiões – a 1ª na França pelo editor Robert Morel em 1965 por intermédio de Esmeraldo, a segunda em 1969 pelo editor Julio Pacello – alimentou esse frison do “primitivo”, “inocente” e “puro” da arte dita popular. 

É interessante que em sua análise crítica do oratório e das xilogravuras de Nosa, Franco enfatize a engenhosidade das soluções formais diante das chamadas representações simplistas de um tema religioso clássico e consagrado no contexto cristão. A Via Sacra e o sofrimento suportado por Jesus foram historicamente mobilizados como dispositivos moralizantes para as massas, entre as quais a abnegação material e a submissão física constituem uma condição imperativa para a ascensão do espírito — especialmente em meio à fragilidade econômica e à turbulência política, como foi o caso durante o tempo de Franco como profissional das artes nos setores crítico e curatorial. Seja sob o ditatorial Estado Novo (1937–45) durante o governo de Getúlio Vargas ou sob a ditadura militar posterior (1964–85), as produções artísticas de natureza religiosa tinham, duvidosamente, a função pública de familiaridade cultural e de criar metáforas críticas para causas sociais.

No entanto, no que se refere a esse conjunto de artigos de Maria Eugênia Franco, os temas religiosos na arte moderna brasileira são um bastião da constituição da identidade nacional, um aspecto de obsessão na geração tardo-moderna do Retorno à Ordem. Franco parece ter feito um círculo de eterno retorno, ainda que indireta e tangencialmente, ao reino místico cristão em meio às suas próprias lutas para construir o ambiente artístico e a formação estético-educacional do público⁶⁰(síntese da forma com o conteúdo, síntese da prática artística investigativa e dramatização dos afetos), ainda que hoje ela seja pouco lembrada por seus pares.

The post Catholic and Popular Mysticism in Brazilian Modern Art: The Quest for Maria Eugênia Franco’s Critique of Sacred Representations / Misticismo católico e popular na arte moderna brasileira: a busca da crítica de Maria Eugênia Franco às representações sacras appeared first on post.

Jean-Michel Atlan (1913–1960)—who signed simply as Atlan in his works—¹is most often considered a representative of lyrical abstraction, an art movement that took root in Paris after World War II. Born in the Casbah of Constantine to a Jewish Berber family (a fact he often emphasized),² his Algerian childhood lent specific forms and colors to his uniquely creative imagination. Atlan’s parents combined tradition and modernity, enrolling their children in both a Talmudic school and a French secular school. Steeped in the mystic readings of sacred texts, his father transmitted knowledge of the Kabbalah to his son, a legacy that would remain important to the artist throughout his life.

In 1930, Atlan left home to study philosophy at the Sorbonne. He became involved in political circles as soon as he arrived in Paris, publishing in Trotskyist journals like La Vérité (The Truth) and attending anti-colonial protests. Concurrently, he began writing poetry, drawing closer to the literary circle surrounding Georges Bataille (1897–1962) and the revolutionary Surrealist movement. He started teaching philosophy but was dismissed when the Vichy regime began to collaborate with Nazi Germany and implemented anti-Jewish laws. Within this extremist context, in 1940, Atlan started to make visual art. Imprisoned under the pretext of “Communist activities,”³ then committed to the Sainte-Anne psychiatric hospital from January 1943 to August 1944, he executed his first paintings on boards and makeshift canvases provided by friends and hospital staff.⁴

Once Paris was liberated, Atlan dedicated himself entirely to painting, declaring: “I’ve made the leap from poetry to painting, like a dancer who has discovered that dance is better than verbal incantations for his self-expression.”⁵ He made his breakthrough in the art scene in December 1944, right after the war, at a time when artists had to reinvent themselves to rebuild their relationship with the public.⁶ Nonetheless, his career and distinctive work have posed a challenge to critics. Atlan was perceived both within the School of Paris and on its fringes, engaging in every pictorial trend—from “Art Informel” to lyrical abstraction—so as to better disassociate himself from all of them.⁷ 

After the war, Atlan was hailed as an innovator by new gallery owners such as Denise René and Aimé Maeght as well as by art critics and historians, including Jean Cassou, Charles Estienne, and Michel Ragon (who would become one of the artist’s closest friends). Like French writers Jean Paulhan, Jean Duvignaud, and Clara Malraux, American writer Gertrude Stein was among his first supporters, purchasing several of his works. As a philosopher, Atlan was comfortable taking stances on issues rocking the art world and in 1945, published a manifesto in the second issue of the French journal Continuity.⁸ In this text, he questioned the concept of reality, and, further, the conception of realism—which, according to him, resulted in paintings that were too literal.⁹ Atlan felt a profound sense of freedom and broke his contract with Galerie Maeght in 1947. After making that decision, which was praised by the French artist Pierre Soulages (1919–2022),¹⁰ Atlan experienced a slower period in his career. However, he continued to paint and exhibit. In 1957, his career gained momentum again with a mature body of work that received international recognition in Europe, Japan, and the United States. He would not attend the April 1960 opening of his solo exhibition at The Contemporaries Gallery in New York, because he died in Paris on February 12 in his studio on rue de la Grande Chaumière. By tracing the trajectory of his unconventional career, from his homeland to his premature passing, one can gain a deeper understanding of this self-taught artist’s distinctive impact on art, transcending predefined categories and movements.

A Gestural Painting Focused on the Sign

The works by Atlan in The Museum of Modern Art’s collection represent both periods of the artist’s activity (which were separated by a reclusive time of low visibility for Atlan from 1947 to 1957, although he was still working): lithographs and line blocks created by Atlan in 1945 for Description of a Struggle (Description d’un combat) by Franz Kafka, an illustrated book published in 1946, and Realm (Royaume), a pastel on colored paper made by the artist in 1957. Despite being created ten years apart, the sign is present in both works.¹¹ While the 1945 prints foreground the plastic potential of the sign, his later pastel establishes its use as a means for the artist to relate to the world around him. 

Atlan progressively developed images incorporating biomorphic forms and strange signs. What were his sources of inspiration? Perhaps Arabic calligraphy, which he had encountered in many forms, including in the epigraphic decors of mosques and Islamic monuments in Constantine, such as in the famous madrassa on rue Nationale by his parent’s house? Maybe Hebrew calligraphy, with its graphic and esoteric dimensions? Or Berber motifs used in the decorative arts and symbols to ward off evil? Indeed, Atlan recalled seeing “Berbers tracing geometric signs, making little triangles or zigzags on pottery.”¹² Or ideograms from Japanese culture, with which Atlan felt a close affinity? In Atlan’s visual world, everything is sign and can truly be grasped only through understanding a mysterious language all his own. Atlan constructed his work over a fifteen-year period under the reign of the sign, using lines that are sometimes sharp but more often supple and cursive—signs that, like language, have endless variations. Everything feels connected, both surprisingly open and yet equally mysterious: black forms emerge as abstract signs, or as stylized silhouettes of humans, birds, and trees, or a combination of all these morphing together in metamorphosis—a process central to the artist’s magical universe. Some of his works evoke the Maghreb,¹³ but the majority make no reference to it, leaving the viewer unconstrained in their visual experience and the enigma preserved.

Movement and gesture are embedded in his work. From his earliest ink drawings to his collection of pastels, Les Miroirs du Roi Salomon (King Solomon’s Mirrors), which was published posthumously, calligraphy proved to be consistently significant for the artist. In his illustrations for Kafka’s Description of a Struggle, Atlan transmuted this calligraphy into his own writing. As part of his first contract with Galerie Maeght, at the suggestion of Georges Le Breton and Clara Malraux (who translated Kafka’s text into French), Atlan created a series of lithographs to illustrate the edition for its September 1946 publication.¹⁴ Working with lithographer Fernand Mourlot proved vital to his work: “My contract with Maeght led me to Mourlot’s lithograph studio, where I worked with stones for a year. This time was incredibly enriching for my painting—the black and white taught me about color. In black-and-white work, I discovered light and matter.”¹⁵

He persistently pursued material investigation, driven by a desire to find the best way to bring his forms to life.¹⁶ He explained his choice of materials as follows: “I needed a medium like fresco or oil paint, which led to my absorbent preparations using sackcloth canvas and to mixing powders, oils, and pastels.”¹⁷ Just as a line cuts across to create a symbol, the direct application of pastels—which cannot be covered or redone—contributes to the expressivity of his gestural painting. Atlan’s large oil canvases from this period owe their sumptuous nature in part to the work he was doing on paper at the same time, including in distemper and pastels. His research on color, such as silver, white and ivory black, as well as the absorbent abilities of his mediums, led to his becoming “a modest yet incredible craftsman,” as Michel Ragon put it.¹⁸ He dedicated himself to pastels when the technique was considered outdated and had become largely obsolete in contemporary art. But Atlan was not swayed by fashion, and he worked in that medium (among others) because of its mineral aspects, which evoked earth colors and the ocher of rock. This was undoubtedly inspired by memories, such as of the magnificent, towering plateau upon which Constantine is built.

Conjuring a mental image of his home city, by then far away, he said of the sketches he made in his notebook, “I have Judeo-Berber origins, like almost everyone there in the old city . . . which was built with stone, gullies, eyries, and cactus.”¹⁹ With his propensity for these techniques, his soot-black lines, his symbols from another age, and his ocher colors, Atlan offered the viewer glimpses of the cultural substrate that inspired him and created a staunchly modern work that nonetheless maintained a firm grip on its cultural references. His friend, the artist and poet André Verdet (1913–2004), used these audacious words when speaking of Atlan: “This undercurrent of Afro-Mediterranean civilizations . . . Jean Atlan bathes in the very humus of eras archaic, beyond neolithic.”²⁰ Therewith related, it is noteworthy that from November 1957 to January 1958, the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris was showing explorer Henri Lhote’s exhibition on cave paintings discovered in Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria—an exhibition that resonated with several modern artists. In the case of Atlan, the artist told Pierre Alechinsky (born 1927) that the cave metaphor ran through his work. He admitted that, according to him, art and beauty are to be found deep within it.²¹

While not discounting the primordial role of migration in sparking and intensifying memory, everything points to the fact that for Atlan, these recollections and legacies were more than fixed and inert backdrops; instead, he saw them as pliable material for an inventive imagination, freed by gesture to enter the work, reactivated endlessly in creations in which signs and colors combine to give profound coherence and constant renewal.

Atlan seemed to play with materials and mediums to construct his pictorial space: juxtapositions and superpositions reveal the intense vibrations of his colors. He used the expressive potential of vivid hues to their greatest effect, contrasting them with the black forms that structure and invigorate the space. Indeed, Clara Malraux remarked on how the colors and signs were in tension, bringing a rhythm to the heart of his works.²² In the same period, Atlan himself discussed rhythms in dance and painting as a symbol of life, such as in “Letter to Japanese Friends,” which he wrote shortly before his death.²³ In this text, he calls painting an “adventure that confronts man with the formidable forces within and outside of him: destiny and nature.” The rhythm, tension, and violent expressivity in his works add a tragic dimension that reflects his internal suffering and the impact of the conflicting worlds he had lived through. 

Realm (1957) is among the works he produced in his later period of intense creative activity and public exposure. As with other paintings and pastels from this time, the space has been refined, and the composition focuses on fewer, more majestic signs. The artist stages polysemantic forms that appear to be contemporary and personal interpretations of arabesque decoration. Likewise, the presence of rhythm is felt: The forms dance within the painted field, and the viewer can picture them continuing beyond the frame despite the black line that borders it. These shapes seem backlit in a mysterious procession, connected through an entanglement that evokes the idea of metamorphosis. Ocher, red, chalk white, and a few blue highlights lend a strange and uncertain luminosity contrasting with the foreground’s dark scrim. This tension between light and dark, line and color, is accentuated by the texture and shade of the paper, deliberately left exposed akin to the strokes of a pen.

Characterizing Atlan’s Works: Decentering the Gaze, Moving beyond Categories

The two works by Atlan in MoMA’s collection, along with others that are emblematic of his style, such as the large paintings he created from the mid-1950s until his death, reinforce the idea that his art cannot be confined within the artistic categories of Europe at that time. Although mainstream formal logic opposes figuration and abstraction, this binary thinking does not apply to Atlan’s paintings. Today, this fluidity would easily be accepted, but it was a source of debate in the postwar period.

The terms “lyrical abstraction” and “abstract expressionism,” more suited to postwar tastes, likewise did not satisfy the painter, as he did not embrace either one. Michel Ragon put forth the notion of “other figuration” to describe Atlan’s work after his early Art Informel period. In a discussion, Atlan told him that he preferred the term “other art,” suggesting that he didn’t want to be confined to a trend or to be boxed in stylistically.²⁴ For Ragon, this so-called otherness stemmed largely from the artist’s embeddedness in North African culture and history.

Ragon and other critics then began to use the term “barbarism”—often associated with the idea of rhythm—to characterize his art. This word, as well as “primitivism,” were used to describe Atlan’s output, but each has its own level of ambiguity: the former oversimplified his approach, while the latter decontextualized his original anchoring, placing it within a different cultural arena. Beginning in the 20th century, many European artists attempted to tackle the non-Western universe of signs, seeking to emphasize the notion of primitivism. This idea, embraced by artists such as those associated with CoBrA, including Asger Jorn (1914–1973) and Corneille (Guillaume van Beverloo; 1922–2010)—with whom Atlan exhibited in 1951—does not align with his intentions.²⁵ Similarly, among the practitioners of lyrical abstraction, his approach bore no similarities to that of Georges Mathieu (1921–2012), for example, who was becoming famous in Paris around the same time for extolling a type of gestural painting inspired by the calligraphic arts of the Far East. Without a doubt, the postwar context was a suitable one in which to challenge the supremacy of European art. Still, unlike European artists, who were decentralizing their views to understand the world better, Atlan’s evolution was in colonized Algeria, where he had constructed his visual universe; furthermore, he could speak from within the subjugated societies resisting that domination in their own ways. He was not coming from the outside; he was no stranger to the universe of forms other artists would appropriate and use. He claimed to belong within it, first through his political engagement during his youth and then solely through his aesthetic after the war.

In this decentring of the gaze, the question arises whether Atlan’s works relate in form to the Algerian painters who were also in Paris during the 1950s. Those from the generation born in the 1930s took an interest in Atlan’s work upon arriving in Paris. Among the Maghreb painters in the modern era, there is formal proximity with the so-called painters of the sign (“les peintres du signe”), such as Moroccan artist Ahmed Cherkaoui (1934–1967) and Algerian artists Mohammed Khadda (1930–1991), Choukri Mesli (1931–2017), and Abdallah Benanteur (1931–2017), for whom Atlan was a predecessor. The concept of sign painting, coined by Algerian poet Jean Sénac (1926–1973), was an important aesthetic trend amid Algeria’s decolonization and post-independence period. It was historically aligned with a desire for cultural reappropriation through the spotlighting of Arabic and Berber writing, as well as ancestral geometric signs like those used for basket-weaving, pottery, rug-making, and tattoos.²⁶ In his essay “Elements for New Art,” Khadda stated: “Atlan, the prematurely deceased Constantinian, is a pioneer of modern Algerian painting.”²⁷ We should not interpret this statement as assigning a label or identity but rather as expressing both interest in a new aesthetic and gratitude for Atlan’s work—Atlan paved the way for those artists in that moment in history and helped to legitimize their artistic research. 

The Postcolonial Context: Atlan (and Us)

Once idolized, then overshadowed, Atlan is particularly interesting in the postcolonial context: it is necessary to rediscover the vivid work of this precursor, one who used the power of the sign to claim his place in the world at the beginning of decolonization and who underscored the presence of plural modernities within modern art. Critics in his time spoke of the syncretism of his work. By instead referring to the work of Édouard Glissant on creolization, we can go beyond this syncretic vision and reconnect Atlan’s work to other aesthetic experiences that are the result of the creolization of art in the 20th century, a significant source of renewal and a shared universe, recognizing the contributions of each of these actors without having to resort to the idea of hierarchy or centralization.

Translated from the French by Allison M. Charette and Beya Othmani. Click here to read the French version.

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Jean-Michel Atlan (1913-1960) – qui signait simplement Atlan –¹ est le plus souvent considéré comme l’un des représentants de l’abstraction lyrique, mouvement qui marqua la scène parisienne dans l’après-guerre. Né dans la casbah de Constantine, au sein d’une famille juive berbère, comme il aimait à le rappeler,² son enfance algérienne a contribué à donner formes et couleurs à son imaginaire singulier de peintre. Les parents d’Atlan concilient tradition et modernité, inscrivent leurs enfants à l’école talmudique mais également à l’école laïque française. Imprégné de la lecture mystique des textes sacrés, son père lui transmet aussi la connaissance de la kabbale, sujet qui accompagnera l’artiste tout au long de sa vie. 

En 1930, Atlan part étudier la philosophie à la Sorbonne. Dès son arrivée à Paris, il marque son engagement politique en publiant dans des revues trotskistes comme La Vérité et en participant à des manifestations anticolonialistes. En parallèle, il poursuit une activité de poète qui le rapproche du cercle littéraire formé autour de Georges Bataille ainsi que du mouvement surréaliste révolutionnaire. Il enseigne la philosophie, mais il est révoqué suite aux lois antijuives instaurées par le régime de Vichy qui collabore avec l’Allemagne nazie. C’est dans ce contexte extrême qu’Atlan commence le dessin dès 1940. Emprisonné sous prétexte de « menées communistes »,³  puis interné à l’hôpital psychiatrique Sainte-Anne de janvier 1943 à août 1944, il réalise ses premières peintures sur des matériaux de fortune grâce à la complicité de ses proches et du personnel soignant.⁴ 

Au moment de la libération de Paris, Atlan décide de se consacrer pleinement à la peinture et déclare : « Je suis passé de la poésie à la peinture comme un danseur qui découvrirait que la danse le révèle mieux que les incantations verbales ».⁵ Il émerge sur la scène artistique dès décembre 1944 dans un immédiat après-guerre qui pousse les artistes à chercher un nouveau langage pour renouer avec le public.⁶ Le parcours et les travaux de cet artiste singulier interrogent les critiques. Atlan se situe à la fois dans et en marge de l’école de Paris dont il traverse les tendances picturales, de « l’informel » à l’abstraction lyrique, pour mieux s’en extraire.⁷

Après-guerre, de nouveaux galeristes comme Denise René, Aimé Maeght, de même que certains critiques et historiens de l’art comme Jean Cassou, Charles Estienne ou encore Michel Ragon, qui sera un ami proche, voient en Atlan un novateur. À l’instar des écrivains comme Jean Paulhan, Jean Duvignaud, Clara Malraux, l’Américaine Gertrude Stein installée à Paris compte parmi ses premiers soutiens en lui achetant plusieurs œuvres. Théoricien, Atlan prend position avec aisance sur les questions qui agitent le monde de l’art et publie un manifeste dans le numéro 2 de la revue Continuity en 1945 par lequel il remet en cause le concept de réalité et par là même la conception du réalisme qui produit, selon lui, une peinture par trop littérale.⁸Profondément libre, Atlan rompt son contrat avec la galerie Maeght dès 1947. Survivant tant bien que mal à une période difficile à la suite de cette prise de position saluée à l’époque par Pierre Soulages,⁹ Atlan continue de peindre et d’exposer, puis revient en 1957 avec un travail confirmé qui trouve alors un écho international en Europe, au Japon et aux États-Unis. Il ne verra pas l’ouverture de l’exposition que lui consacre The Contemporaries Gallery à New-York en avril 1960, car il décède prématurément des suites d’une longue maladie, le 12 février, dans son atelier, rue de la Grande Chaumière à Paris. Suivre son parcours atypique et complexe, du pays natal jusqu’à son décès précoce, est une manière de rendre à cet artiste autodidacte, et à son art, toute leur singularité, et de sortir des catégories englobantes.

Une peinture gestuelle qui privilégie le signe 

Ainsi, les deux œuvres présentes dans le fonds du MoMA sont-elles représentatives de chacune de ces deux périodes, séparées par une éclipse au cours de laquelle Atlan est peu visible même s’il continue à travailler : lithographies de ses débuts, créées en 1945 pour illustrer la publication Description d’un combat de Franz Kafka, et Royaume, un pastel de 1957, réalisé après le tournant du milieu des années 1950. Dans les deux œuvres, distantes pourtant de plus de 10 ans, le signe est là, avec l’intuition précoce de son potentiel plastique dès 1945, puis avec une place affirmée comme marque d’une présence au monde. 

En effet, Atlan développe progressivement des peintures dont les formes sont chargées de biomorphisme et de signes étranges. Quelles sont ses sources d’inspiration ? La calligraphie arabe, qui lui fut familière, entre autres, sous sa forme épigraphique, ornant les monuments musulmans de Constantine, les mosquées ou la célèbre médersa proche de la maison de ses parents rue Nationale ? La calligraphie hébraïque, avec ses dimensions graphiques et ésotériques ? Les motifs berbères, à la fois décor ancestral et symboles prophylactiques ? Atlan évoquait lui-même qu’il avait vu des « Berbères tracer des signes géométriques, faire de petits triangles, des zigzags sur des poteries».¹⁰ Les idéogrammes de la langue japonaise, culture avec laquelle Atlan avait des affinités intimes ? Dans le monde peint d’Atlan, tout est signe et ne se laisse saisir qu’au travers d’une langue mystérieuse qui est, somme toute, sa propre empreinte sur le réel. Sur une quinzaine d’années, Atlan construit son œuvre en affirmant, par des lignes parfois acérées, mais le plus souvent souples et cursives, le règne du signe, porteur, comme un langage, d’infinies variations. Tout semble lié, étonnamment ouvert et mystérieux à la fois ; les formes noires apparaissent comme des signes relevant de l’abstraction, mais pourraient tout aussi bien être la stylisation de silhouettes humaines, d’oiseaux, d’arbres ou de tous ces éléments confondus dans une métamorphose qui semble l’une des clés de l’univers magique de l’artiste. De nombreux titres de ses réalisations évoquent le Maghreb,¹¹ mais la majorité n’y fait pas référence, laissant le récepteur libre et l’énigme préservée.

La question du mouvement et du geste va donc être centrale dans son œuvre. Depuis ses premiers dessins à l’encre de Chine jusqu’au recueil illustré de ses pastels, Les Miroirs du Roi Salomon, qui paraît à titre posthume, la calligraphie se révèle une écriture particulièrement importante pour l’artiste tout au long de sa carrière. Les illustrations de l’ouvrage Description d’un combat de Franz Kafka conservées par le MoMA constituent un exemple de la transmutation de cette calligraphie vers la propre écriture de l’artiste. Dans le cadre de son premier contrat avec la galerie Maeght, et sur une suggestion de Georges Le Breton et de Clara Malraux qui traduit le texte de Kafka,¹² Atlan va concevoir une série de lithographies pour illustrer cette édition d’art qui sera publiée en septembre 1946. Il va trouver chez le lithographe Fernand Mourlot un enseignement capital pour son œuvre : « Mon contrat chez Maeght m’a conduit vers les ateliers du lithographe Mourlot, où j’ai travaillé pendant un an sur les pierres. Ce séjour m’a terriblement enrichi sur le plan de la peinture elle-même ; le noir et le blanc m’ont appris la couleur. Dans le travail du noir et du blanc, j’ai fait la découverte de la lumière et de la matière ».¹³ 

Il poursuit obstinément ses recherches matiéristes, motivé par l’impératif du type de rendu qui pourra le mieux faire vivre ses formes.¹⁴ Il expliquait ainsi le choix des matériaux utilisés dans ses œuvres : « […] j’ai besoin d’une matière proche de la fresque et de l’huile à la fois, d’où mes préparations absorbantes, l’utilisation de grosse toile de sac, le mélange de poudres, d’huiles, de pastels. »¹⁵ De même que le trait incisif créant le signe, l’application directe du pastel sur lequel on ne peut revenir contribue à l’expressivité de sa peinture gestuelle. Les huiles sur toile de grand format qui datent de ce moment doivent pour une part leur somptuosité au travail sur papier que mène en parallèle Atlan au moyen d’autres techniques qu’il affectionne, telles que la détrempe et le pastel. Ses recherches sur les couleurs, comme le blanc d’argent ou le noir d’ivoire, ainsi que sur le pouvoir absorbant des supports, concourent à faire de lui un simple mais fabuleux artisan, selon Michel Ragon.¹⁶ Il s’adonne ainsi au pastel à une époque où la technique, considérée comme datée, est largement tombée en désuétude dans l’art contemporain. Mais Atlan n’est pas sensible aux phénomènes de mode et travaille ce médium, entre autres, pour son aspect minéral qui évoque les couleurs de la terre et les ocres des rochers. Ceci fait sans doute écho à ses souvenirs, comme le fantastique rocher surplombant des à-pics vertigineux sur lequel est bâtie Constantine : « […] mes origines sont judéo-berbères, comme un peu tout le monde là-bas dans cette vieille ville […] qui est construite avec des rochers, des ravins, des nids d’aigle et des cactus »,¹⁷ dit-il pour évoquer la présence mentale de sa ville natale, désormais lointaine, dont il dessine le profil dans ses carnets.

Par le goût pour ces techniques, par ses traits charbonneux, ses signes hérités d’un autre âge et ses teintes ocre, Atlan laisse entrevoir quel substrat culturel l’inspire pour créer une œuvre résolument moderne, mais en prise avec ses référents culturels. Son ami l’artiste et poète André Verdet parle d’Atlan en ces termes audacieux : « Ce souterrain des civilisations afro-méditerranéennes […]  Jean Atlan baigne à même l’humus des âges archaïques, par-delà le néolithique. »¹⁸ Rappelons qu’eut lieu à Paris au musée des Arts décoratifs, de novembre 1957 à janvier 1958 l’exposition d’Henri Lhote sur les découvertes de l’art rupestre en Algérie, dans le Tassili N’Ajjer, exposition qui interpella nombre d’artistes modernes. Évoquons également ici la métaphore de la grotte – qu’Atlan livre un jour à Pierre Alechinsky –,¹⁹ au fond de laquelle se trouvent, selon le peintre, l’art et la beauté. 

Sans oublier le rôle primordial de la migration qui potentialise et magnifie les souvenirs, tout concourt à penser que ces souvenirs et héritages ne sont pas pour Atlan de simples arrière-plans fixes et inertes, mais que ces perceptions passées sont les matériaux ductiles d’une imagination inventive que le geste libère pour les faire advenir dans le présent de l’œuvre, sans cesse réactivées dans des créations où signes et couleurs se combinent et donnent à l’œuvre peinte d’Atlan sa profonde cohérence et son constant renouvellement.

Atlan semble jouer avec les matières, le support, pour construire son espace pictural ; juxtapositions, superpositions révèlent les intenses vibrations de ses couleurs. Il exploite au mieux le potentiel expressif de teintes fortes contrastant avec ses formes noires qui structurent l’espace et le dynamisent. Clara Malraux remarquait dans l’un de ses textes que couleurs et signes étaient en tension, mettant la notion de rythme au cœur des œuvres.²⁰ Atlan lui-même, à la même période, parle du rythme dans la danse ou la peinture comme symbole de la vie, comme il le réaffirme peu avant sa mort dans sa « Lettre aux amis japonais ».²¹ Dans cette lettre, comme dans d’autres textes, il parle de la peinture comme d’une « aventure qui met l’homme aux prises avec les forces redoutables qui sont en lui et hors de lui, le destin, la nature ». Rythme, tension, violente expressivité donnent à ses œuvres – qui apparaissent comme des champs de forces antagoniques – une dimension tragique, échos de ses tourments intérieurs et des mondes que le peintre a traversés et qui l’ont profondément marqué par leur conflictualité même.

Le pastel conservé par le MoMA, Royaume (1957), fait partie des œuvres réalisées dans cette période d’intense activité de création et d’expositions en France et à l’international. Comme dans les autres toiles et pastels de cette dernière période, l’espace s’est épuré, la composition se concentre sur quelques signes à la présence majestueuse, qui emplissent le champ peint de manière expressive. Des formes polysémiques se déploient telles des déclinaisons modernes et très personnelles de l’antique arabesque. L’idée de rythme opère, les formes sont dansantes, et on les imagine se poursuivant aussi hors champ, malgré le trait noir qui délimite la scène. Ces formes paraissent vues comme à contre-jour dans une mystérieuse procession, reliées les unes aux autres dans un entremêlement qui évoque l’idée de métamorphose. Les ocres, les rouges, le blanc crayeux, quelques éclaircies de bleu apportent une luminosité étrange et incertaine qui contraste avec les formes au premier plan. Cette tension entre le clair et l’obscur, la ligne et la couleur est servie par le grain et la teinte du papier que le peintre laisse apparaître comme s’il participait à son écriture. 

Caractériser son œuvre ? Décentrer le regard, s’extraire des catégories

Ces deux œuvres et d’autres devenues emblématiques de son style, comme les grands formats qu’il réalise du milieu des années 1950 jusqu’à sa mort, confirment le sentiment que les catégories de l’art européen ne conviennent pas : si la logique formelle et l’usage opposent la figuration à l’abstraction, pour la peinture d’Atlan, ce schéma de pensée binaire ne s’applique pas. Cela est aujourd’hui accepté, mais était, après-guerre, l’objet de débats esthétiques et polémiques. 

Les vocables d’abstraction lyrique, d’expressionnisme abstrait, plus conformes à l’évolution des sensibilités d’après-guerre, ne semblent pas non plus satisfaire le peintre qui ne s’y reconnaît pas entièrement. Michel Ragon avait avancé la notion d’une « autre figuration », pour les œuvres d’après la première période informelle. Dans un dialogue, Atlan lui répond qu’il préfère le terme « art autre », pour montrer qu’il ne veut être enfermé dans aucun courant.²² Pour Ragon, cette altérité tient beaucoup au rôle matriciel joué par son histoire et sa culture nord-africaine. 

Michel Ragon ainsi que d’autres critiques utilisent alors l’adjectif « barbare », souvent associé à l’idée de rythme, pour caractériser son art. Ce terme et celui de « primitivisme », qui fut aussi mobilisé pour parler d’Atlan, ont leur part d’ambiguïté : le premier, pour essentialiser sa démarche, le second, pour décontextualiser son ancrage originel dans une aire culturelle autre. En effet, depuis le début du xx^e siècle, nombre d’artistes européens ont cherché à se confronter aux univers des formes non occidentales, ce que cherche à mettre en évidence la notion de primitivisme. Cette notion, utilisée par exemple pour les artistes du groupe CoBrA, tels Asger Jorn ou Corneille, avec qui Atlan a exposé en 1951 sans faire partie du groupe, ne semble pas convenir à son propos.²³ De même, parmi les tenants de l’abstraction lyrique, sa démarche n’est pas similaire à celle d’un Georges Mathieu qui devint célèbre à Paris au même moment en prônant une peinture gestuelle qui s’inspirait des arts calligraphiques d’Extrême-Orient. Certes, le contexte qui suit la Seconde Guerre mondiale est propice à remettre en cause la suprématie de l’art européen, mais contrairement aux artistes européens qui ont décentré leur regard pour mieux saisir le monde, Atlan a évolué dans l’Algérie colonisée, il y a construit son imaginaire et il parle de l’intérieur de ces sociétés assujetties qui résistent à leur manière à cette domination. Il ne vient pas de l’extérieur, il n’est pas étranger à l’univers des formes que d’autres vont utiliser et s’approprier. Il y affirme son inscription, d’abord, par son engagement politique durant ses années de jeunesse, et après-guerre, uniquement par son esthétique.

En décentrant le regard, se pose la question de savoir si les œuvres d’Atlan ont une proximité formelle avec celles des peintres algériens présents à Paris dans ces années 1950. Les peintres avec qui le rapprochement prend tout son sens sont issus de la génération née dans les années 1930. Et l’intérêt qu’ils ont porté dès leur arrivée à Paris au travail d’Atlan est déjà un indice. Parmi les peintres maghrébins de l’époque moderne, la proximité formelle se situe avec la mouvance des peintres du signe, comme le Marocain Ahmed Cherkaoui, les Algériens Mohammed Khadda, Choukri Mesli, Abdallah Benanteur, pour qui Atlan est un précurseur. Selon la notion forgée au début de l’indépendance par le poète algérien Jean Sénac, cet important courant esthétique, en mettant en avant l’écriture arabe et berbère ainsi que les signes géométriques ancestraux comme ceux utilisés pour la vannerie, la poterie, les tapis, le tatouage,²⁴ s’est inscrit historiquement dans une volonté de réappropriation au moment de la décolonisation et après les indépendances. Le peintre Khadda affirme dans son essai Éléments pour un art nouveau : « Atlan, le Constantinois prématurément disparu, est un pionnier de la peinture algérienne moderne. »²⁵ Il ne faut pas voir là l’assignation à une identité, mais plutôt l’intérêt pour une nouvelle esthétique et la reconnaissance du travail d’Atlan, qui, à ce moment de l’histoire, leur a ouvert voie et a contribué à légitimer leurs propres recherches.

Atlan et nous dans le contexte postcolonial 

Adulé puis éclipsé, Atlan revêt un intérêt tout particulier dans contexte postcolonial : nécessité de redécouvrir l’œuvre intense d’un précurseur qui affirme par le règne du signe, au début de la décolonisation, une présence au monde qui peut être saisie, en termes de modernités plurielles, comme l’un des rameaux de l’art moderne. Les critiques ont parlé en leur temps du syncrétisme de son œuvre. En se référant aux travaux d’Édouard Glissant, on peut aller au-delà de cette vision syncrétique et rapprocher cette œuvre d’autres expériences esthétiques qui sont le fruit d’une créolisation de l’art du xx^e siècle, source majeure de renouvellement et d’un universel partagé, en reconnaissant l’apport de tous ses acteurs sans recourir à l’idée de hiérarchie ou de centralité.

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“In cosmic beauty, there is no place for degrees or locations in time and space: Cosmic beauty is infinite. Words like pretty, ugly, tragic, funny, and useful—the abiding limits in the brief race toward death—on the other hand, are part and parcel of sensual reactions.”¹

With these words, Costa Rican artist Manuel de la Cruz González (1909–1986) describes the crucial difference between an art that leads to the infinite—abstract art, in his case—and a transient art that reflects immediate emotion—a characteristic particularly evident, in his view, in figurative art.² Manuel de la Cruz understood art as a tool to integrate humankind into the universality of the cosmos in order to yield cosmic beauty. The quote above is taken from his lecture “El arte como integración cósmica” (“Art as Cosmic Integration”), which he gave in Maracaibo, Venezuela, in 1957. In this talk, the artist laid out his theories on the cosmic value of geometric abstraction. Over the course of the 1950s, he not only lectured and wrote on these ideas, he also developed a body of work that reflected his thinking, a line of production that he would extend into the early 1970s.

Also in the 1950s, another artist from Costa Rica embarked on a body of work tied to the transcendent. But unlike Manuel de la Cruz, Luisa González de Sáenz (1899–1982) did not attempt to integrate universal truth into her art.³ Instead, she professed to accept that it was impossible to access one’s ultimate reality. In the paintings, drawings, and stained-glass works that she produced in the 1950s through the end of her life, landscape and the human figure predominate; her lines and brushstrokes convey a specific way of perceiving the natural environment, humankind, and the spirituality in which both are steeped (fig. 2).For Luisa, the perceptible forms in her surroundings were the elements in which it was possible to experience and even see the transcendent.

In this essay, I will address these artists’ visions of the spiritual and the transcendent and how their work reveals predominant twentieth-century stances on the role of art in the representation and transformation of the spiritual.⁴Manuel de la Cruz exemplifies an artist who understood art and his own work as evidence of the vibrations of an irrefutable universal truth. Art, for him, was a device that when understood in terms of cosmic beauty, transports the human being to an absolute human state. Luisa, on the other hand, held that one cannot know ultimate truth in this lifetime. That said, she expressed no doubt that the natural environment and humankind are imbued in spirituality, an immanent charge so potent that it can change our very perception of things. Her work is not a device for integration, but instead the materialization of a spiritual world enmeshed in daily life.

Manuel de la Cruz González and Luisa González de Sáenz were part of the generation of pioneering Costa Rican artists who, in the 1930s, introduced the avant-garde to their country.⁵ In the late 1940s, Manuel de la Cruz ventured into abstraction, and in the early 1950s, he moved to Venezuela.⁶ It was in the context of a Venezuelan art scene influenced by Neo-Plasticism, a movement spearheaded by Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944), that Manuel de la Cruz developed his theories.⁷ Early in her painting career, Luisa focused on landscapes and portraits. Starting in the late 1940s, her work grew more hermetic as she looked to the natural landscape of the Costa Rican highlands. At that juncture, her palette darkened, and her images became suggestive of an adverse and unstable environment, one that inspired a degree of abstraction in her depictions of nature. The artist addressed a range of religious and mythical themes, and she almost obsessively fashioned scenes in which nature takes precedence over humankind. Though she pursued her artistic career in Costa Rica, a collection of drawings preserved by the Sáenz-Shelby family suggests that the natural settings and cities she visited in the United States and Europe also influenced her production. Indeed, these places resonate in many of the sketches closely tied to the work she began in the 1950s.

In 1956, Manuel de la Cruz published the essay “El arte abstracto: Realidad de nuestro tiempo” (“Abstract Art: The Reality of Our Times”) in the Costa Rican magazine Brecha. In this text, he states that abstract art is the “reaffirmation of eternal aesthetic truths.”⁸ Abstraction, in other words, was, in his mind, a universal art that transcends geographic boundaries. In his lecture in Maracaibo in 1957, the artist suggested that the components that make up the universe are number, rhythm, order, and balance. He described an eternal cosmos in which any independent form is ultimately tied to a universal whole, where life consists of endless integration and reintegration of energy, and the human spirit and the universe are vibrantly connected.⁹ From this perspective, he argued, art can be seen as “a way to unleash certain reactions we call aesthetic. . . . It is aimed at a certain aspect of the human in an inevitable pursuit of attuned cosmic vibrations [where] the human moment is seen as a bridge to its universal integration.”¹⁰ These “cosmic vibrations” are what is emitted by the harmonic rhythm manifested in the geometric shapes, lines, and colors used in painting, which itself facilitates cosmic integration (fig. 3).

Manuel de la Cruz presented three routes—the spontaneous, the intuitive, and the intellectual—by which art can lead to cosmic integration. Based on these, he outlined categories for an art history in which abstract art from the first half of the twentieth century corresponds to the intellectual route. That said, all three routes are revealed throughout history, and the art at play in each of them is tied to the cosmic eternity that envelops humankind.¹¹Manuel de la Cruz looked to the “inner necessity” declared by Vasily Kandinsky (French, born Russia. 1866–1944) in 1911 in Über das Geistige in der Kunst: Insbesondere in der Malerei (Concerning the Spiritual in Art: Especially in Painting) to understand major historical events in the world of the arts and culture. In “El Cuadro Tridimensional” (“The Three-Dimensional Painting”), which he published in 1958, Manuel de la Cruz asserts: “Both during his era and beyond it, Fra Angelico is interesting—and will always be interesting . . . not because he painted angels, but because of how he painted them. He imbued them in that mystical oneness common to all men, even when that zeal is directed to Buddha or Quetzalcoatl. He is interesting, then, because of how he expressed his ‘inner necessity.’”¹²

Manuel de la Cruz expressed that he saw the transition from “primitive” thought to rational thought, and that the final route—the intellectual—was, for him, the one that lays out a path to truth, to “its cosmic reason, its vital, eternal and universal rhythms.”¹³ He argued that it is possible to imbue the work of art with the conditions that enable cosmic integration, and further, that these conditions are present to a large degree in the work of Mondrian and Kandinsky (figs. 4, 5). As he asserted in his 1957 lecture, “Both of them understood that the only way to reach the infinite rhythm is through abstraction, the elimination of any trace of reference, sensuality, or allegory, the total omission of the romantic.”¹⁴

In the context of this lecture and his essays, Manuel de la Cruz’s geometric abstract painting underscores his commitment to the notion of universality. In his Abstracción geométrica nº 8 (Geometric Abstraction No. 8; fig. 6), for example, flat color planes interact with horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines, as well as with simple geometric shapes. In works like Equilibrio cósmico (Cosmic Balance), slightly curved lines generate a tension between color and form.¹⁵

Unlike Manuel de la Cruz González, Luisa González de Sáenz did not leave a body of writing describing her vision of art. What we have instead are brief interviews, critical reviews of her work over the course of decades, and the testimony of friends and family. In other words, Luisa appears to have been less inclined to describe her process. She seems to have been most interested in how art could become a daily means of expression. When her art was exhibited to the public, what was on display was her perception of the environment, the spiritual, and humanity.¹⁶ In figure 7, for instance, we see a landscape, in all its vastness and spirituality, overpowering the solitary individual and the path they have trodden. The night sky transforms into a flying creature that seems to have emerged from the night itself.

Luisa’s creative work is overwhelmingly figurative. Figuration was for her, as she stated in 1957, “the best form of expression [for me]. Truth is the ultimate pursuit of art and all forms of expression. [Figurative art] is my truth.”¹⁷ She drew on highland landscapes—trees, mist, gusts of wind, and temperature—for that personal expression.¹⁸ The artist believed that the inability of humankind to perceive nature differently was an impediment born of a spirit largely closed to sensory experience.¹⁹ In her mind, society shuts down the possibilities of the gaze available only to an open spirit. Her art, then, gradually came to engage not only what is observed by that spiritual vision, but also what is transformed, via the spiritual, in the human being and nature. As she states in a recording from Carlos Freer’s 1999 documentary Una tarde de ella misma: Retrato de doña Luisa González de Sáenz (An Evening of Herself: Portrait of Doña Luisa González de Sáenz): “I am not sure if there is such a thing as spiritual change, though that is something we all go through, right? We often evolve, and our spirit is transformed, without even realizing it, right? I gradually became very interested in the human soul, and I saw it as much in nature as in persons themselves.”²⁰

According to Costa Rican writer Abelardo Bonilla (1898–1969), Luisa had the ability “to materialize the spiritual, to render it visible, to make it our own; [and] to spiritualize matter, to render it impalpable—and that is no less our own.”²¹ She would transfigure observable nature by means of a style characterized by strong brushstrokes or lines that yield an atmosphere so integral, adverse, and shifting that it veers into abstraction as the elements represented blur into one another. This is evident in an illustration she made to accompany the short story “María de la Soledad: Episodio en la vida del doctor Lunático” (“María de la Soledad: Episode in the Life of Doctor Lunatic”), which was written by her brother Mario González Feo (fig. 8). In this drawing, she has referenced two sentences uttered by the main character in the story: “How I wish I could feel the vital force of that transfigured evening. Because the whole evening was transfigured!”²² Also relevant is the passage that precedes these sentences: “There are things and persons that are transfigured at a given moment by dint of the extraordinary force we call mystery. They are still themselves, but it is as if an inner light, an inward flame . . . lit them up and gave them an interior transparency—that is transfiguration.”²³ The image shows a figure in a desolate landscape; her body is part of the natural space in general, but mostly it forms the rays of a “light” in the sky. We can distinguish between the terrain on which the figure stands and the sky, and we can sense the tension between that source of light and the figure. At the same time, the quality of the line gives these elements—figure, sky, light—a sense of mobility and adversity.

The idea that spiritual observation and expression are individual runs through the artist’s life and work: the soul is inevitably and innately alone, even when in the company of others.²⁴ Most of the human figures that cross Luisa’s landscapes do so alone; when there is more than one figure, they do not seem to notice one another. Her work, on the other hand, is steeped not only in spiritual transformation and solitary pilgrimage, but also in acceptance of the impossibility of seeing the true face of transcendence or of life after death.

Luisa was fond of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam (Persian, 1048–1131), and she made several drawings inspired by it. The Rubaiyat values taking immediate pleasure in life, since human knowledge is categorically incapable of answering the fundamental questions faced by humanity, such as the reason for life and death. Luisa’s drawing of quatrain 68, for example, reflects these ideas (fig. 9): “We are no other than a moving row / Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go / Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held / In Midnight by the Master of the Show.”²⁵ Here, once again, the artist has used light to transfigure space. With the force of her line, she makes us feel that we are witness to an inevitable transformation or transience, one that will affect both humankind and nature. In another sketch (fig. 10), she has transcribed a passage from quatrain 32, which discusses those places of knowledge inaccessible to humankind: “There was the Door to which I found no Key; / There was the Veil through which I could not see.”²⁶

The representation here is more somber than in the other works discussed. A path in a desolate nighttime setting leads to a door, behind which lies the transcendental to which humans have no access. The faces and bodies of the three lantern-lit figures walking toward that door are covered. These figures do not have the key to that space of knowledge—to be sure, no one does.

It is entirely possible that Luisa’s art was influenced by literary and philosophical sources other than the Rubaiyat, though we cannot know for certain which ones. As previously mentioned, the artist did not make this information public. By attempting to reconstruct in part how the artist seems to have understood her work, we can say that she was conscious of a spiritual world that the human soul was capable of perceiving both in the soul itself and in the natural environment in which the soul unfolds. This interaction leads to a constant but solitary transformation of the soul and of nature in an individual spiritual experience that continues throughout existence. That sensibility is patent in Luisa’s work—as is the interaction between and mutual transformation of the individual and the environment. At the same time, she seems to have understood the limit of that experience; as is evident in her work, any other aspect of the transcendent, especially anything related to life after death, is shrouded in impenetrable mystery.

Manuel de la Cruz, on the other hand, made the points of reference for his artistic agenda known. These influences range from a Hegelian notion of history and trust in science to the aesthetic and spiritual theories of modern abstract artists who were, in turn, influenced by the Theosophical Society, which had its own stance on scientific advancement.²⁷ Similar ideas are at play in Manuel de la Cruz’s writings and Mondrian’s essays. For the Dutch artist, “Art—although an end in itself, like religion—is the means through which we can know the universal and contemplate it in plastic form.”²⁸ Manuel de la Cruz, like Kandinsky, asserted that he was living at a watershed moment in history, a time when truths were revealed; art could help, he argued, to manifest that revelation.²⁹ With Neo-Plasticism, Mondrian himself foresaw a new culture “of the mature individual; once matured, the individual will be open to the universal and will tend more and more to unite with it.”³⁰

Through influences such as these, Manuel de la Cruz developed his own vision of a macro-history. He was interested in deciphering the mystery of time and the relative truth regarding the role of humankind in the cosmos—concerns he shared with esotericism.³¹ And these concerns also informed his conception of Neo-Plasticism. In his writings, he follows a narrative akin to that of a number of esoteric traditions in which “all things originate in one and all things in turn flow and return to one.”³² It is within this conceptual framework that Manuel de la Cruz forged his vision of art history. In his view, this history advanced toward cosmic truth and the repudiation of a certain sensual and superficial individualism whose final champion was Romanticism.³³

In closing, we might read Luisa’s art in the context of the historical progress posited by Manuel de la Cruz. Some strains of Romantic thinking resonate in her work, at least in terms of an aesthetic that expresses the spirituality innate to nature. Think of William Blake (English, 1757–1827) and Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840), for instance.³⁴ The Romantics, like Luisa González de Sáenz, understood that the spiritual can be captured in its environment through the subjective, that is, through a personal vision. True knowledge—or the knowledge to which the individual can gain access—exists only in the subjective,³⁵ an idea that aligns with Luisa’s perception of the possibility of seeing the world through the opening of the soul.

How to understand humankind in our environment and the universal principles that govern us were concerns shared by Manuel de la Cruz and Luisa. Their distinctive artistic and, perhaps, personal experiences led them to contrasting sets—or fabrics—of beliefs, practices, and systems as well as strategies. Manuel de la Cruz’s work engages the control and understanding of truths that can be materialized in an object, and Luisa’s the veiled nature of the spiritual that is, nonetheless, experienced and, therefore, potentially materialized in the object.

I am grateful to Gabriela Sáenz-Shelby, Valeria Mora López, and Leonardo Santamaría Montero for their comments on early drafts of this text. I would like to thank Sofía Vindas Solano and the Repositorio Centroamericano de Patrimonio Cultural for the information they provided on Luisa González de Sáenz and for access to primary sources relevant to her life and work. Lastly, I thank the Museo de Arte Costarricense and the Museos del Banco Central for allowing me to reproduce works from their collections.

Spanish

“La belleza cósmica no admite gradaciones o localizaciones geográficas o cronológicas, es infinita, mientras que las reacciones sensuales llevan aparejados los términos de bonito, feo, trágico, humorístico, útil, límites constantes en su fugaz carrera hacia la muerte”.³⁶

Con estas palabras, el artista costarricense Manuel de la Cruz González (1909–1986) determinaba la diferencia crucial entre un arte que conducía al infinito, ejemplificado en su caso por la abstracción, y un arte transitorio que respondía a emociones inmediatas, características que son más evidentes en el arte figurativo.³⁷ El artista conceptualizó el arte como una herramienta que generaba la integración del ser humano en la universalidad del cosmos, lo que daría como resultado la belleza cósmica. Esta cita forma parte de la conferencia impartida por Manuel de la Cruz en Maracaibo, Venezuela, en 1957, titulada “El arte como integración cósmica”, en la cual propuso sus teorías sobre el valor cósmico del arte abstracto geométrico. A lo largo de la década de 1950, el artista también dictará otras conferencias y escribirá ensayos al respecto, además de iniciar una producción de obras que reflejan sus preceptos teóricos y que culminaría a inicios de los años setenta.

En la misma década de 1950, otra artista costarricense iniciará una producción también vinculada a lo trascendente, pero, a diferencia de Manuel de la Cruz, no había en su trabajo una intención de integración en esa verdad universal, sino una aceptación de la imposibilidad de acceder a la realidad última del ser. Me refiero a Luisa González de Sáenz (1899–1982), cuyas pinturas, dibujos y vitrales se enfocaron, a partir de los años cincuenta y hasta el final de sus días, en un estilo donde el paisaje y la figura humana predominan, y las formas de expresión en la línea y la pincelada plasmaban una manera de percibir el entorno natural, el ser humano, y los aspectos espirituales imbuidos en ambos (fig. 2).³⁸ Luisa trató las formas perceptibles proporcionadas por su entorno como los elementos en los que era posible sentir y ver lo trascendente.

En este ensayo me concentro en las propuestas sobre lo espiritual y lo trascendente propias de estos artistas, y en cómo sus obras revelan posturas predominantes en el siglo XX sobre el papel del arte en la representación y transformación de lo espiritual.³⁹ En el caso de Manuel de la Cruz, veremos un entendimiento del arte y de su propia producción en cuanto componentes que evidencian las vibraciones adecuadas de una verdad universal irrefutable. El arte se convierte, además, en un artefacto que al ser comprendido bajo conceptos como la belleza cósmica, acerca al ser humano a su estado absoluto. En contraste, la obra de Luisa no acepta que el ser humano pueda conocer, en esta vida, una verdad última y, sin embargo, la artista tiene claro que el entorno natural y las personas están permeados de una carga espiritual, una cualidad inmanente tal, que lo vuelve capaz de modificar la percepción de las cosas. Su obra no es un artefacto para la integración, sino la materialización de un mundo espiritual imbuido de la cotidianeidad que nos rodea.

Manuel de la Cruz González y Luisa González de Sénz pertenecieron a la generación costarricense de artistas de los años treinta, fundamental para la introducción de las vanguardias artísticas al país.⁴⁰ Hacia finales de la década de 1940, Manuel de la Cruz inició su incursión en el arte abstracto.⁴¹ A inicios de los años cincuenta arribó a Venezuela y ahí, influido por el ambiente artístico del país y por el neoplasticismo, movimiento ampliamente divulgado por Piet Mondrian (neerlandés, 1872–1944), desarrolló sus teorías artísticas.⁴² Luisa comenzó su carrera artística con pinturas de paisajes y el arte del retrato. Desde finales de los años cuarenta empezó a generar obras más herméticas, sirviéndose principalmente del paisaje natural de las zonas de altura. Su paleta de colores se volvió oscura y su estética sugería un escenario pictórico adverso y en movimiento, cuyo resultado plástico indica una cierta abstracción de los elementos naturales. La artista trató disímiles temas religiosos y míticos, y forjó, de manera casi obsesiva, escenas donde la naturaleza imperaba sobre los seres humanos. Si bien desarrolló su carrera artística en Costa Rica, podemos constatar, gracias a la colección de dibujos preservada por la familia Sáenz-Shelby, que los entornos naturales y ciudades que visitó en sus viajes a Estados Unidos y a Europa influyeron en ella, llevándola a realizar una gran cantidad de bocetos de esa temática que guardan una estrecha relación con la producción iniciada en la década de 1950.

En 1956, Manuel de la Cruz publica en la revista costarricense Brecha el ensayo “El arte abstracto: realidad de nuestro tiempo”. El artista entiende el arte abstracto como la “reafirmación de las eternas verdades estéticas”,⁴³ un arte universal que trasciende geografías. En la ya mencionada conferencia de 1957 en Maracaibo, el artista propone que el universo está comprendido en el número, el ritmo, el orden y el equilibrio; un cosmos eterno donde toda forma independiente al final está sujeta a una totalidad universal. La vida consiste en infinitas integraciones y reintegraciones de energía, y el espíritu humano se concibe como una conexión vibrante con este todo universal.⁴⁴ El arte es, en este contexto, “una manera de provocar determinadas reacciones que llamamos estéticas . . . [que] se dirigen a determinada porción de lo humano en inevitable búsqueda de vibraciones cósmicas afines, tomando el momento humano como puente hacia su integración universal”.⁴⁵ Estas ‘vibraciones cósmicas’ son lo emitido por el ritmo armónico que se expresa en las formas geométricas, líneas y colores empleados en la pintura, lo que posibilita el proceso de integración cósmica (fig. 3).

Manuel de la Cruz también establece tres vías artísticas para la integración: la espontánea, la intuitiva y la intelectual; y con ellas compone clasificaciones para una historia del arte, siendo el arte abstracto de la primera mitad del siglo XX la principal vía intelectual. Las vías se muestran a lo largo de la historia, y el arte contenido en ellas son referentes de la eternidad cósmica en la que estamos comprendidos.⁴⁶ Manuel de la Cruz emplea la “necesidad interior”, proclamada por Vasily Kandinsky (Francés, nacido en Rusia, 1866–1944) en 1911 en Über das Geistige in der Kunst: Insbesondere in der Malerei (De lo espiritual en el arte, y la pintura en particular), para entender grandes acontecimientos históricos en el mundo de las artes y de la cultura. En su ensayo “El Cuadro Tridimensional”, publicado en 1958, Manuel de la Cruz nos dice que: “Fra Angelico interesa e interesará siempre, en su época o fuera de ella . . . no porque pintó ángeles, sino el cómo los pintó imbuyéndoles esa unión mística que es común a todos los hombres aún [sic] cuando ese fervor se canalice hacia Buda o Quezlcoatl [sic], vale decir, cómo manifestó su “necesidad interior.”⁴⁷

Manuel de la Cruz ve entonces la transición de un pensamiento primitivo a un pensamiento racional, y es en la última vía donde se puede plantear un camino hacia la verdad, “su razón cósmica, sus ritmos vitales, eternos y universales”.⁴⁸ El artista propone que a la obra de arte se le pueden suministrar las condiciones necesarias para alcanzar la integración cósmica. Esas condiciones están en gran medida representadas por Mondrian y Kandinsky (Figs. 4–5), ya que “ambos comprendieron que sólo por la abstracción, la eliminación de la referencia, de lo sensual y alegórico, el olvido en fin de todo lo romántico, es que podía llegarse al ritmo infinito”.⁴⁹

Cuando observamos la pintura abstracto-geométrica de Manuel de la Cruz en el contexto de estos ensayos, advertimos el compromiso con la noción de universalidad. En su cuadro Abstracción Geométrica Nº 8 (fig. 6), por ejemplo, encontramos plastas planas de color que interactúan con líneas horizontales, verticales y diagonales, además de sencillas formas geométricas. El artista también se sirvió de leves curvaturas de la línea que generaban tensión entre los colores y las formas seleccionadas, tal y como puede verse en Equilibrio cósmico.⁵⁰

Luisa González de Sáenz, a diferencia de Manuel de la Cruz González, no dejó escritos sistemáticos sobre su modo de visualizar el arte. Lo que conocemos de ella son breves entrevistas que le realizaron, comentarios a sus obras de críticos de arte a lo largo de los años, así como los testimonios de familiares y amigos de la artista. En otras palabras, Luisa sería reservada respecto de los procesos existentes detrás de su obra. El interés se dirigía en cambio a cómo el arte se convertía en un medio diario de expresión: cuando este era expuesto al público, lo que se mostraba era su percepción sobre el entorno, lo espiritual y la humanidad.⁵¹ En la Figura 7 vemos, por ejemplo, el potencial que le dio la artista al paisaje, su inmensidad y su espiritualidad, con respecto al solitario individuo, de quien Luisa nos deja conocer el camino que ha recorrido. El cielo nocturno se transforma en lo que podemos dilucidar, es una criatura voladora en movimiento, como si estuviese atravesando o surgiendo de la noche misma.

Luisa encontró una base para la creación en el arte figurativo, al cual consideraba su “mejor forma de expresión, y como en arte y en toda manifestación se debe buscar la verdad, ésta es mi verdad”.⁵² El paisaje de altura, entre otros, le suministró esos componentes para una expresión personal, tales como la forma de los árboles, la niebla, la fuerza del viento y la temperatura.La artista sentía que la imposibilidad de percibir la naturaleza de forma distinta por parte de las personas era un impedimento causado por la falta de apertura del espíritu a otro tipo de sensaciones.⁵³ La sociedad no se permitía explorar las posibilidades de la mirada que únicamente un espíritu abierto podía proveer. En este sentido, la obra de Luisa se involucró gradualmente no sólo en lo que se observa a partir de esta mirada espiritual, sino también en lo que se transforma espiritualmente en el ser humano y en la naturaleza. Como la artista comenta en una grabación que aparece en el documental de Carlos Freer, Una tarde de ella misma: Retrato de doña Luisa González de Sáenz, realizado en 1999: “No sé si hay un cambio espiritual, que generalmente todos tenemos, ¿verdad? Hay ciertas evoluciones que sin darse uno mucho cuenta va[n] transformando el espíritu, ¿verdad? Me fui interesando tanto, y ver en la naturaleza tanto [como] en las mismas personas, el alma humana.”⁵⁴

Luisa poseía la capacidad, de acuerdo con el escritor costarricense Abelardo Bonilla (1898–1969), de “materializar lo espiritual, hasta hacerlo visible y nuestro; espiritualizar lo material hasta hacerlo impalpable, que es también hacerlo nuestro.”⁵⁵ La artista ofrecía una especie de transfiguración de la naturaleza observada, a través de un estilo en el que tanto la pincelada como la línea de dibujo eran fuertes y generaban una atmósfera integrada, adversa y en movimiento, al punto de generar cierta abstracción y falta de claridad entre los elementos representados. Esto se puede advertir en una ilustración que realiza para el cuento “María de la Soledad: Episodio en la vida del doctor Lunático”, escrito por su hermano Mario González Feo (fig.8). El dibujo refiere a dos líneas del personaje principal: “ojalá pudiera sentir ahora la fuerza vital de aquella tarde transfigurada. ¡Porque toda la tarde estaba transfigurada!”.⁵⁶ El texto que precede estas oraciones resulta a su vez valioso: “hay cosas y personas que en un momento dado, por la fuerza extraordinaria de lo que llamamos misterio, se transfiguran. Siguen siendo ellas pero una como luz interior, una llama interna . . . les da iluminación, transparencia interior: eso es, transfiguración”.⁵⁷ La imagen muestra una figura situada en un paisaje desolado y su cuerpo se está integrando con el espacio natural, específicamente con los rayos de la “luz” que está en el cielo. Podemos distinguir entre el terreno sobre el que está la figura y el cielo, y también la tensión entre esta fuente lumínica y la figura. Al mismo tiempo, el trazo posibilita la sensación de movilidad y adversidad en cada uno de los elementos mencionados.

La observación y la expresión de lo espiritualmente percibido son actos individuales. Esto daba pie a un pensamiento recurrente en la obra y en la vida de la artista: la inevitable e inherente soledad del alma, que no es posible eliminar aun estando en compañía de otros.⁵⁸ Nos encontramos con paisajes donde la gran mayoría de las figuras humanas transitan en soledad, y si es que hay varios personajes, estos no se percatan los unos de los otros.Por otro lado, aunado a las transformaciones espirituales y el peregrinaje solitario, la aceptación de la imposibilidad de conocer la verdadera cara de la trascendencia, de una vida después de la muerte, permeó su obra.

Luisa profesaba, por ejemplo, un gran cariño por los Rubaiyat, cuartetos atribuidos a Omar Khayyam (persa, 1048–1131), y realizó dibujos referentes a algunos de sus pasajes. En los Rubaiyat es valioso el goce inmediato de la vida, ya que no hay conocimiento humano capaz de darnos las respuestas a las preguntas fundamentales de la humanidad: los motivos detrás de la vida y la muerte. Un dibujo de Luisa, donde se ilustra el cuarteto LXVIII de los Rubaiyat,refleja estas ideas (fig. 9): “No somos más que una hilera en movimiento / De sombras mágicas que van y vienen / En torno a la linterna iluminada por el sol / Y sostenida a medianoche por el Maestro del Espectáculo”.⁵⁹ La artista vuelve a emplear la luz como elemento que transfigura el espacio. Debido a la fuerza del trazo, la artista posibilita la sensación de que nos hallamos ante la inevitable transformación, o transitoriedad, tanto de los individuos como de la naturaleza. Contamos también con un boceto en el que está anotado un fragmento del cuarteto XXXII (fig. 10) sobre aquellos sitios del conocimiento a los cuales el ser humano no puede ingresar: “¡De esa puerta la llave no encontré yo jamás; ese velo ocultaba lo que existe detrás…!”.⁶⁰ A diferencia de otros ejemplos que hemos expuesto, el tema se representa en un estilo más sobrio. Ante un espacio nocturno y desolado se encuentra un camino que se dirige a una puerta, la cual resguarda aquello trascendente a lo que el ser humano no puede acceder. Los tres personajes caminan hacia la puerta, iluminados sólo por sus lámparas, con sus rostros y cuerpos cubiertos. Ni dichos personajes ni nadie posee la llave que permite ingresar a dicho espacio del saber.

El uso de los Rubaiyat nos permite suponer que varios elementos de la obra de Luisa se vieron influidos por referencias literarias o filosóficas, aunque no sea fácil establecer cuáles fueron. Y es que, como ha sido señalado antes, no hizo pública esta información. Al reconstruir parte de la forma en que Luisa entendió su obra, podríamos decir que la artista estaba consciente de un mundo espiritual que el alma humana era capaz de percibir, tanto en ella misma como en el entorno natural en el que se desenvolvía. Esta interacción provoca la transformación constante del alma y de la naturaleza, y dicho proceso espiritual constituía una experiencia individual que se vivía, a lo largo de la existencia, en soledad. Luisa expresó su sentir por vía de una obra donde se pudiese visualizar precisamente esta interacción y transformación entre el individuo y su entorno. Al mismo tiempo, estaba consciente de que ese era el límite de su experiencia y que cualquier otro aspecto sobre lo trascendente, en especial lo concerniente a la vida después de la muerte, quedaba resguardado en el misterio.

Manuel de la Cruz, en cambio, se interesó en que supiéramos cuáles eran las referencias de su programa artístico: desde una especie de espíritu hegeliano sobre la historia y una fidelidad a la ciencia hasta las teorías estéticas y espirituales de artistas abstractos modernos que, dicho sea de paso, estaban influenciados por la Sociedad Teosófica, la cual proporcionaba su propia postura sobre los avances científicos.⁶¹ Cuando comparamos los escritos de Manuel de la Cruz con los ensayos de Mondrian, por ejemplo, encontramos propuestas similares entre sí. Para el artista neerlandés, “el arte –aunque sea un fin en sí mismo, como la religión– es el medio a través del cual podemos conocer lo universal y contemplarlo de forma plástica”.⁶² Manuel de la Cruz replicó, además, un sentir similar al de Kandinsky: decía estar viviendo en un momento decisivo de la historia, en el cual las verdades se estaban revelando y su arte podía ayudar a manifestar dicha revelación.⁶³ El mismo Mondrian con el neoplasticismo profetizaba el desarrollo paralelo de una nueva cultura, que sería “aquella del individuo maduro; una vez maduro, el individuo estará abierto a lo universal y tenderá más y más a unirse con ello”.⁶⁴

Con este tipo de referentes Manuel de la Cruz generó su propia versión de una macrohistoria, manifiesta en esa preocupación común con el esoterismo por descifrar el misterio del tiempo y la verdad relativa al papel del ser humano en el cosmos.⁶⁵ Su concepción del arte neoplástico no está exenta de esto, ya que como leemos en sus escritos, se sigue una narrativa similar a la de varias tradiciones esotéricas, donde “todas las cosas se originan en uno y todas las cosas a su vez fluyen y vuelven a uno”.⁶⁶ Es en este contexto que Manuel de la Cruz forjó una visión peculiar del progreso en la historia del arte, en la que, a través de las épocas, hay una cercanía a la verdad cósmica y un rechazo ante cierto individualismo, sensual y superficial, cuyo último gran campeón fue el Romanticismo.⁶⁷

Podríamos finalizar con una lectura de la obra de Luisa en el contexto de este supuesto progreso sugerido por Manuel de la Cruz. Su producción artística guarda un cierto eco con algunas líneas de pensamiento del Romanticismo, por lo menos en lo que refiere a una cierta estética donde se expresaba lo espiritual inherente a la naturaleza, como lo sería en el caso de William Blake (inglés, 1757–1827) o de Caspar David Friedrich (alemán, 1774–1840).⁶⁸ Los románticos, al igual que Luisa González de Sáenz, entendieron que la forma de preservar lo espiritual en su entorno se produce a través de lo subjetivo, esto es, una visión personal de lo espiritual. Es en lo subjetivo, de hecho, que el verdadero conocimiento existe, y al que en verdad el individuo puede acudir.⁶⁹ Esta idea se alinea con la percepción que tuvo Luisa sobre la posibilidad de ver el mundo a partir de la apertura del alma.

Tanto Manuel como Luisa tuvieron inquietudes sobre cómo comprender al ser humano en su entorno y sobre los principios universales que nos gobiernan. Los problemas artísticos y, en todo caso, personales que surgieron, los llevaron a un entramado de creencias, prácticas y sistemas, y a soluciones plásticas contrastantes. Las obras artísticas de ambos responden, para el primero, al control y entendimiento de las verdades que se pueden materializar en un objeto y, para la segunda, a la veladura inherente a aquello espiritual que, sin embargo, es experimentado y, por lo tanto, también se puede materializar en el objeto.

Agradezco a Gabriela Sáenz-Shelby, Valeria Mora López y Leonardo Santamaría Montero, por sus comentarios y críticas al revisar los primeros bocetos de este texto. Quiero también agradecer a Sofía Vindas Solano y al Repositorio Centroamericano de Patrimonio Cultural por su apoyo en proporcionarme información y acceso a diversas fuentes relativas a Luisa González de Sáenz. Finalmente, va mi agradecimiento al Museo de Arte Costarricense y a los Museos del Banco Central por el permiso de reproducción de sus obras.

The post The Cosmos and the Spiritual: A Fabric of Beliefs in the Work of Manuel de la Cruz González and Luisa González de Sáenz / El cosmos y lo espiritual: un entramado de creencias en las obras de Manuel de la Cruz González y Luisa González de Sáenz appeared first on post.