 Good evening everyone. Thank you for being here at this the first of the art history lectures of the year Well, I get we'll get this thing started because I just saw there's they're serving guacamole and salsa and chips So, you know appropriate with the Mexican female the lecture Only the art historians get it. Sorry. Okay, so It's my great pleasure to present a good friend of mine James Oles or as my kids call him Uncle Jay Professor Oles is a professor in the art department at Wellesley College since 1996 He is also the adjunct curator of Latin American art at the Davis Museum also at Wellesley University Right now he has a great show that you should definitely go and see at the Wellesley Museum called Art Latin America, which is basically a survey of No, it's not a survey. He hates that word It's a collection of their collection of art Of the Wellesley College, which is a really incredible collection It's definitely worth a trip to Wellesley and for you for the architects, you know There's really some amazing architecture in the campus as well call Rudolf and Moneo You know various other important people He is right now also One of the curators for a major Exhibition on the work of Diego Rivera the great Mexican muralist at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which is supposed to open in 2020. He's also curating What is what will be the first history of color photography in Mexico? At the Palace of Fine Arts that will also open in 2020 It's really actually amazing that we have him here given how much work he has to do We're probably taking his of his time He is also one of the people who has written I think perhaps maybe the most important book on Mexican Art and architecture a survey of the whole Um Period of Mexican art since the colony up to the present And um, and so he's like really actively involved in not only the history of art and architecture But right now working on photography and as you will see, you know today something that deals with both architecture photography And you know kind of the thinking about culture Thanks. Thanks, Luis. Um, you know when I when I lecture with with students I don't read and Most of the time he lives half of the time in Mexico. I run over and I never can finish anything So when I give a lecture like this, I I am going to do a little bit More reading than I usually do. So forgive me for that. First of all, I want to thank Luis I don't know Welcome Fleece to write his books Um, as well as coming down because he's he's a great cook. So it believe me there is good food to be had in in in this part of the world Um, I also wanted to thank Janet Lewis who arranged all the hotel and everything for me Um, to make this trip, which wasn't a very long trip actually from from Wellesley Easy, I also want to thank before I even start a bunch of people that have helped me along the way on this Project, which is an ongoing project. It's not completed yet Um, a guy named Albert Lopez at mit and also Luis have worked in the archives of one of the buildings where these photo murals used to be and they've been Doing a lot of that archival work Unsuccessfully finding anything specifically that I need but that just means that I don't have to go and look in those archives They've really helped me in that way And I've given this talk now at several other schools at at CUNY the graduate center in Mexico City And in Paris and all along the way, you know comments and questions have really helped refine my ideas And so I hope that some of you will have some Questions or or bring something to the table as well And a version of this lecture is going to be published this year by the art institute of Chicago Which is opening a show in this fall called shared vision art and design in mexico 1940 to 1970 Which focuses only on the work of women artists who are modern industrial designers Or designers of any type in mexico in that period probably the most famous is Annie albers But lola alvarez bravo who i'm talking about today is also in that show and claire porcette Who I'll also mention is in that show as well So, um I met lola alvarez bravo for the first time Excuse me In 1990 When she was in her late 80s in her apartment in downtown mexico city She just she died in 1993 So I was lucky to meet her just there at the end of her life But unfortunately, I was much more interested at that time In mexican painters and muralists of the 1930s Then in lola's own work And so I was asking her about these other artists and I never really explored Her own work with her But since then since her death, I've worked on several shows of her photographs And these projects have forced me to look more carefully at her own work at her particular images And and especially doing some old-fashioned connoisseurship down in dirty work of an art historian Just trying to figure out what the original titles and dates of many of her photographs were Um More recently, however, I've been exploring another important but far less well-studied aspect of her work The 15 at least photo murals that she created for government offices And corporate clients in mexico in the 1950s and as the title of my talk indicates I think she's really mexico's forgotten muralist She as I'll say later, but I'll just tell you now I think she was the most important woman muralist in mexico in the 20th century There weren't very many women working in murals and we can we could talk about that in the q&a period Why why that was the case? But whenever there's a list of women muralists in mexico, she's never on that list Even though I think she was the most prolific of all These two portraits of lola alvarez bravo basically frame her active career as a photographer From the 1930s to the 1970s and might provide us with a bit of background about her She was born to a rather wealthy family in the town of lago stay moreno In the state of halisco in 1903 and not in 1907 as she always said But the comforts that she enjoyed in the mexico's pre-revolutionary era Were not to last A family scandal sent her mother packing Um and lola never revealed what had happened and maybe she never knew why her mother had left the family or been expelled Her father then brought her to mexico city But died of a heart attack soon thereafter leaving her with uh to live with a half brother As it happened fortunately in the building where her half brother lived There was a young man that she fell in love with named manuel alvarez bravo And these childhood friends married in 1925 Which was a moment of great artistic ferment in mexico city lola had no artistic training at the time of her marriage Beyond the obligatory piano lessons that a nice young girl would have been uh studying Taking um and it would take her some time to learn the photographers tricks of the trade from her husband manuel Who was already interested in photography and then Both emotionally and artistically to break away from him They separated formally in 1934. They won't want to get a Divorce until quite a bit later, but they separated in 1934 and at that time she kept both of his last names Unwilling I think by that time after she'd already started to make a name for herself in the mexico city art world To go back to being Just an unknown girl named delores martinez. So she kept her name lola alvarez bravo, which is Quite quite important In the photo montage is that lola created that i'm going to focus on in the lecture today I think she found a way to overtly distinguish herself From the work of manuel alvarez bravo from her former husband Even more than in her still photography Manuel was never really interested in manipulation of the negative um, and he was Never interested in making public art though. He accepted many commissions often working alongside lola even after their separation To photograph and document murals by the famous Artists like diegora vera and josec lamentio rosco for publication in books and magazines So she was very familiar with murals from an early age because she was photographing them Lola alvarez bravo was undoubtedly the most prolific and accomplished woman muralist of her generation And she was the only mexican woman woman who participated in an important in an important international phenomenon Known locally as integracion plastica the integration Of sculpture painting and other visual elements into modern architectural programs Which led to a renewed interest in mural painting in mexico in the 1950s Mainly on building exteriors and which was surely one of the key contributions of mexico to the history of modern architecture But all of lola's works Are almost entirely forgotten today Why well the fragility of her medium basically photographic Paper mounted on composition board or masonite and the modifications of her sites Not only due to standard building renovations, but also to the massive earthquake that hit mexico city in 1985 Have led i think to their total disappearance beyond the original collages You know the cut out Of photographs that she pasted together sort of on a scale of about eight and a half by eleven piece of paper Copy negatives of those collages And then prints from those copy negatives, which we might call the photo montages that survived That she saved in her archive And only a precious few in fact Far too few for for what i would like to be able to work with Precious few doc photographs that document their original installation Um In fact, I think because of this until recently scholars Have discussed these images which have been more or less known and have appeared in many books about lola alvarez bravo As studio compositions, you know as sort of art objects Rather than as public works of art Even more revealing I think and and leading to this Kind of erasure of these works from the history of modern mexican muralism Is the fact that lola alvarez bravo herself seems to have placed very little importance on this practice at the end of her career She never mentioned her photo murals in a series of extensive interviews she gave in the 1980s not once Not once did she ever say you know well in the 50s I did photo murals too and they were great You know nothing and she barely discussed them with her close friend the late art historian olivier debroyes Who wrote an extended essay on her photo montages based on interviews with lola in the 19 in 1989 In that essay discussing works that he dates to the late 40s or 50s debroyes says only this That quote requested by different businesses and institutions They resemble her photo montages resemble advertising posters to be exhibited in a large format Period, that's it. That's the entire historical analysis of this vast body Of work until the present in the mid 1950s, however Alvarez bravo proudly announced her accomplishments as a photo muralist She wrote a short essay for a magazine called espacios Which is a prominent publication of the period That situated her work in which in that essay she situated her work specifically in the context of what was known as integracion plastica This theory much theorized integration of murals and architecture in post war mexico And around the same time She she provided a curriculum for a Jewish cultural center This casa de la cultura de la juventud Where she was going to give a lecture actually on film new paths in film. She was a great admirer of film and this survived in her archive and for this Silly pamphlet that could be totally lost to history. I think there's the only one surviving image, but in the curriculum The biographic facts that she provides on the yellow page She says where she's born, you know that she's been involved in this literary and artistic movement She started the first cynic club. She's contributed her photographs to art books. She does documentary photography That's half of her cv. The rest of her cv basically are all the photo murals that she's been working on So at this in this undated pamphlet, which I think must be around 1954 55 She put a tremendous emphasis on her photo mural production and if it wasn't for this surviving pamphlet I would not have Confirmed proof that in fact all of these photo montages that survive in her archive were in fact originally photo murals So the you know, this is the historians You know The luck of finding the little piece of paper that allows you to then You know go forward Because other than this inventory, let's say in her cv The documentary record is extraordinarily sparse With very little surviving information on commissions or contracts either in the buildings where she worked Or in her own surviving papers Indeed it remains Difficult to date any of her photo murals precisely Though all of them were certainly produced during the presidencies of miguel aleman 1946 to 52 And adolfo ruiz cortines 1952 to 58 A period in mexico late 40s and 50s marked by what's known as developmentalism a protectionist economic system that supported economic growth under the rigid control of the ruling party in mexico The partido revolucionario institucional or pre During those two sexenios or six year presidential terms The federal government built some of the nation's most important modernist landmarks Including high-rise housing blocks new government ministries And most famously the new campus of the universidad nacional Autonomia de mexico the unam which was inaugurated in 1952 Interior and exterior murals in a variety of media were essential visual and discursive components of all of these projects And that work almost entirely survives today Well maintained and treasured as mexican national patrimony So now what i want to do is just turn to to explore a little bit How lola alvarez bravo even became involved in photo montage before we get to the photo murals themselves Rather than our husband manuel alvarez bravo We can locate lola's interest in montage in her friendship with tina modati Who she the italian born photographer who was living in mexico at that time who lola met in the late 1920s After modati's companion and mentor edward weston had returned to his wife in california Around the time that modati was working for the communist party newspaper el machete You can see these workers here reading the newspaper Although edward weston like manuel alvarez bravo who was his who was following him Rejected almost any manipulation of his negatives in pursuit of a new vision a somewhat naive belief in photographic truth tina modati's political activism and her membership in the communist party Let her to create what were certainly the first modernist photo montages made in mexico Surely inspired by german or russian precedents though little work has been done under sources In 1928 working for the communist newspaper el machete modati created at least five of these montages Published in a series called contrasts of the regime One of them is on the right All of which Compared bourgeois life on and around the elegant passeo de la reforma on the top the upper class with Images of the city's poor in the streets In a neighborhood known as tepito in the lower half or lower class So all of these montages just approached the upper class at the top with the lower class at the bottom Only one of these has actually been published And the montage effect is very subtle here You can see the billboard is one photographic negative and the man sitting on the sidewalk with the wall behind him is a second photographic negative But if you know do any photography yourself You know it kind of be impossible to have the man in focus The wall slightly out of focus and then the billboard which is really in the background Again in focus. So the focus is kind of the the way we we understand that it's a photo montage I have no solid evidence that lola knew of this particular series in el machete But she very well might have turned to it as a precedent In the 30s when she created her first and equally vehement and discursive political photo montages These two images by lola were produced in 1935 as Revolutionary posters for an exhibition sponsored by an organization organization known as the League of Revolutionary Artists and Writers That was organized by her friend and roommate the painter maria isciardo Together with other women who are all of them were employed as art teachers at that time in primary schools run by the federal government In both the montage the assemblage of different elements is far more abrupt and obvious than in madati's work Calling attention to itself though as in madati there's a similar juxtaposition of capital in the upper sector and Worker or laborers or the poor in the lower sector of the image Again similar work was common in german and soviet magazines at this time But in a later interview lola told olivier debroy's she never saw or paid attention to such sources although Never really trust what artists say particularly later in their lives and interviews, but She was disdaining these you know european sources Anyway In the 30s in mexico print media along with radio and film became more effective strategies for political persuasion and propaganda Than murals had been in the 1920s and photo montage had a boom beginning around 1936 Not surprisingly lola's other political photo montages of this period later period of the later 30s appear in magazines Some that are more uplifting like the one on the right from a magazine that was directed to school teachers See these kids heads on a new modern school being built in mexico city Or some more critical like one that appeared on the cover of this magazine of the you know league of revolutionary writers and artists front to front Which is a sculpture a paper mache sculpture of a worker smashing the You know smashing fascism surrounded by this abstract array of buildings and skyscrapers that we'll see is a is an idea that lola will return to again Lola's montages became more visually sophisticated and complex Just around the time that the use of political photo montage in mexico in general it was expanding dramatically And uh, I could go into more about photo montage in general in mexico, but time Requires we get we get to the photo murals. So i'm gonna skim here a little bit In 1946 um One of lola's most important jobs of that year was to provide the photo documentation for a luxurious bound report commemorating the six-year presidential term of manuel avila camacho Indeed over the 1940s and 50s lola dedicated much of her time to these official projects Photographing the president's tours across the country where he was inaugurating new dams and highways and school buildings and She would document literacy campaigns and the distribution of textbooks and all these sorts of of rather Boring subjects. I think for for an artist to be to working on and what's interesting is that It's clear that lola alva's bravo never considered any of that work her art She Never included any of those photographs in any of her later exhibitions or publications Even though she kept most of the negatives But some of those images that she took on these tours and you know the sort of the work photographs that she was doing officially found their way Cropped and spliced into her later photo montages, which by the way never include any bits of the pictures she considered her art photographs So she kept these kind of two practices separate But the photo montages Are closer to the work photographs in some way The elegant report that she did for the government included three photo montages shown here Which show a rather dramatic leap from her work of the 30s. This is 1946 First they're less radical in than her previous works And instead of emphasizing Social programs are the poor They're more dynamic complex compositions Built from many negatives rather than just two or three And these works here in this official government Report are closer in both theme and style to the photo murals. She creates in the 1950s These post-war images created during a period of rampant industrialization and urbanization Which was supported by the regime Um Reveal some of the principal themes of her later work architecture and industry The first one is architecture. The second one is more about communication systems, which we'll see she returns to The third one on the far right is actually about music, which she never Does a photo mural related to Now didactic fresco sculptures and even stained glass windows Had emerged as a crucial visual means of communicating official government rhetoric in mexico in the 1920s Just after the revolution But it remains unclear when and how alvarez bravo first conceptualized expanding her photo montages Which she'd been doing for magazines basically or posters to mural size scale Although there were many many precedents for this in in europe and the united states Following the russian artist elisitski's early experiments in the late 1920s Photo murals proliferated in europe in the 30s first in europe and the and the united states As modern architects embrace the medium as a rational and technologically sophisticated strategy for decoration In new york photo murals were featured in a moema exhibition of 1933 And soon thereafter were included in the elegant decorations at rockfeller center There's one example on the left At the exposition international of 1937 in paris financially constrained governments Like those of the popular front France and the spanish republic adopted photo murals in their pavilions as a less expensive But yet dramatically modern alternative to the traditional techniques of mosaic sculpture and fresco Which were employed not surprisingly in the very luxurious and expensive nazi and soviet pavilions Women artists played important roles in several of these early projects Margaret the american photographer margaret bork whites mural for the rca offices at rockfeller center That you see on the left in the lobby Expanded her own photographs enlarged her own photographs 100 times This was actually exactly contemporary with dieguera vera's famous censored mural in the same building charlotte parian collaborated with fernand lege in the French ministry of education kiosk at the 1937 exposition in paris although parian like alvarez bravo and bork white Unlike i'm sorry unlike alvarez bravo and bork white relied on found images rather than her own negatives Now the french photographer joseph roind who lived in mexico from 1950 to 1953 At exactly the moment alvarez bravo began her photo murals Had written an important review of the photo murals at the 1937 fair which lola never went to see But i think the concept of the photo mural was actually introduced to mexico more directly by the spanish artist joseph renau a recent exile from the spanish civil war Exile to mexico from the spanish civil war Who had designed photo murals for the spanish pavilion in paris designed by luiz lacasa and joseph uis cert And some of you are probably familiar with that building in 1939 40 renau collaborated with david alforos acaris and others on a well known mural for the mexican electrician syndicate That involved the use of photo montage and slide projections Although the final work was rendered in brightly colored industrial enamels Less familiar is an extensive photo mural with the utopian title The total electrification of mexico will end the people's misery Which he designed in 1941 to wrap around four walls of the lobby in the same building and this is uh part of that part of that project This photo mural was never installed Perhaps because of the union's limited budget, but just as likely for technical reasons I don't know that at the time it would have been possible to actually produce A photo mural of this scale in mexico and i'll mention that in a minute tell you that in a minute That same decade renau published a widely read book on Uh that in You see there on the right that included a chapter on photo montage and photographic retouching Which was essential to creating these large-scale photo montages So I think lola who knew renau very well probably got her inspiration from this this work But it's not only having the idea of making a photo mural. You have to be able to technically produce it Large-format photo printing had been first developed around 1933 by the film industry in hollywood As an inexpensive alternative Sorry to painted backdrops That's that's where the photo mural comes from It was quickly adopted For use in commercial billboards and then photo murals installed in public buildings Photographers would send their negatives, you know, they would make a photo montage or just use one photograph if they wanted Um to be amplified and then printed onto meter-wide roles of sensitized paper or cloth Which were then painstakingly mounted onto plywood or masonite panels And you you had to Produce these in strips. So you you know, you could have a wide photo montage You could just make on on on on your on your table right using cut up pieces of of photographs or negatives But then you had to Print these strips and the strips had to have a tiny tiny overlap So that everything there wasn't a gap or or any kind of Obvious joint and then you had to sand that overlap very very gently so that it was perfectly smooth all these joints And then you had to somehow varnish the entire thing to protect it from being scratched or or or anything So it was really kind of a complicated process This sensitized paper strips were mounted onto plywood or masonite panels Um that could then be mounted Onto a wall in some cases artists actually just applied those Kind of wallpaper strips directly to the wall But more commonly they were mounted onto panels that could then be installed into a space The technique however the the ability to make these in a laboratory was rather slow to arrive in mexico The enormous photo enlargements of the pedrigal subdivision that architect luis barragan installed in the walls of his studio in the tacubaya neighborhood In mexico already by the late 1940s may have been if not the first at least among the first At least in the art and architecture world in mexico city and it's I think important that the first Really well documented photo enlargements of any scale that we have in mexico Are in relationship to an architect studio Because architects were the ones that were really interested in this in this technology By the early 1950s judging from advertisements in architecture magazines like espacios At least by 1952 there were uh labs in mexico city that were advertising the ability to produce photo murals in mexico city um Making photo murals practical if not necessarily that inexpensive as they were in europe and the united states and There's a period review where somebody's talking about them already In general and and the the guy says well here in mexico the costs of development and imported materials Are much more than they are abroad Lola worked with a lab called photo murales escamilla, which was one and then there was this other one That you can see the art on the right side So at least two of these labs indicating some demand for making these photo murals though I've yet to find more information On either of these companies than these advertisements The technique however will be of tremendous use During a decade where rapid growth of mexico city meant there were ever more new government and commercial buildings Rising in the city creating opportunities not only for architects But for muralists including lola alvarez bravo and just as an aside i want to say that The many architects had these photo murals in their studios in mexico city mario pani had one Which no longer survives and this is a photo mural in the office of an architect named francisco artigas From about 1975 so they they loved having these kind of explosive arrays of all of their creations behind their rather Unmodern desks you can see it's not very He certainly didn't shop at null. I can tell you that But what I want to say is that it's this I think lola alvarez bravo was very fortunate She was extremely close her whole life to the architects of mexico city and was very close friends with them with their wives Vacation together she was and and so I think this is really what propels her into this field It's this tight relationship of the artist with the architect community That she that she had much more than many of the other muralists of her generation Almost all of lola's photo mural projects were done for the signature building projects of the government And also some for private industry Many of which were designed by leading national architects who tended to be close Personal friends of the photographer. That's why you're not supposed to go off script because you already have it written down The the mexican architects were certainly inspired by how their european counterparts Le courbousier at the pavillon swiss in 1933 or cert in la casa at the spanish pavilion of 1937 Had already adopted the medium as this rational strategy for decoration in keeping with modern design theories Um as one scholar has argued the photo mural was considered technologically advanced and in in itself representative of this new era And thus it appealed directly to modern architects who wanted to put something visually modern In the building rather than fresco or mosaic which might have a modern subject But which were archaic In terms of their material and manufacture For the most part lola's themes would support both industry and the government Praising no more of that, you know, anti capitalist stuff of the 30s Totally praising capitalism technology resource extraction computer systems and official Developmentalist policies such as highway building and the state control of communication networks Her works more more more like those in the united states. In fact our pro technology and pro industry Advocating the acceleration of production and development whether financed by the state or the private sector They're never about the collective workers even when they sometimes feature isolated individuals In fact in the 1950s. She totally abandoned the use of photo montage as an agitational tool Avoiding chaos and conflict in her compositions Um, uh, like what we would see in the revolutionary montages of the 1930s where the parts don't fit together very well And they kind of upset you and are unbalanced Uh, instead she tries to create compositions where there's greater sense of order And stability and sometimes symmetry all of which serve to place capitalist development in a positive light As i've said all of the photographic fragments in in these murals I'm going to go talk about now derive from her own photographs rather than from images appropriated from newspapers magazines or other photographers So One last general point that I want to say before I kind of go through an inventory of some of these projects Is uh, it is we really have to interrogate or think about her experience as a woman Artist and as a woman muralist Although the works were produced off-site rather than on public scaffolds, which entailed a more grueling effort and physical presence Lowest prolific accomplishments in the 50s A decade the decade just the decade when mexican women finally got the federal vote You know, it's late, um, obviously um Might serve to counteract or at least complicate claims that women were discriminated against as muralists Uh throughout the post in the post-revolutionary period As i've written about elsewhere American women women from the united states were actually given several important commissions in mexico in the 1930s And several scholars have discussed the fact that maria iscaardo lola's close friend Was denied the ability to transform this into a mural in the stairway of the mexico city Mainly the city hall really in mexico city in the mid 1940s because of the complaints of Diego Rivera and josé clemento irosco, but what i would argue is that It might have been that maria iscaardo's composition was seen by those male artists as rather simplistic and uninteresting And even at first glance you can see how lola's work is compositionally and discursively far more complex than that of maria iscaardo What's what's equally interesting though is that while maria iscaardo Emphasizes a woman here As the sort of embodiment of mexico's modern development with her blueprint and Her equipment and the new building rising up above her Women play a very minor role in lola's own photo montages of the 1950s as you're going to see Although precise chronologies are impossible to determine At this stage of my research I think her first photo mural might have been one designed for the theater in carlos obergon santa celia's new mexican social security institute Completed on the avan On the paseo de la reforma in mexico city in 1950 Although the first published reference to the photo mural that i have found is actually 1953 The project is relatively straightforward in composition and meaning and it draws on relatively few images or negatives These healthy sort of tropical decorative landscapes That you can see here in these three kind of Images and these what you're looking at on the bottom. This is what we have in lola's archive You know these just eight and a half, you know eight by ten prints photo prints They don't really help you understand like where would they have been in the space or how were they oriented? Um The german scholar joana spanca recently discovered the photograph above Showing the these uh three panels installed on the curving stairway In the theater in the building that no longer survives I mean the building survives, but the theater no longer that that stairway doesn't have murals anymore The photo mural is quite abstract made up of these close-up and distant shots of tropical vegetation Probably taken in acapulco The trapezoids Include in in some places painted images of jaguars. There's one here And I think you can all see there's one over here And they're painted they're kind of montaged in by some unknown artist, which of course Makes us think that she was thinking of enri russo paintings by russo Seems the most direct inspiration for this first first and uh rather on political Project and it really doesn't have anything to do with the health ministry other than this is a healthy like tropical Space that with good air or something like that. I don't know Far more important was the series of photo murals that lola created for the new headquarters of the Secretaria de comunicaciones y obras publicas the ministry of communications and public works Known as the scope in mexico city Which opened in 1955 The visionary behind the enormous complex was architect carlos lasso Who was also one of the main creative forces behind the new campus and who unfortunately died Before either of these projects was completed And this is an aerial view of this vast vast ministry for You can see it really takes up a whole triangular plot of land enormous plot of land And here are some close-ups of the of the main structures As at the university city the unam the scope complex included exterior murals um here by guano gorman and jose javes morado who did a series of stone mosaics on the exteriors And sculptures by francisco zuniga and rodrigo arena's betancourt Far less prominent for passerby on foot or in bike and car In a car where the five photo murals that lola alvarez bravo created for interior spaces in the scope And in that pamphlet that i showed you earlier She says she did them for cinco departamentos or five different bureaucratic units So i now believe just from that one pamphlet because these murals don't survive Is that they must have been in five different spaces in the building All of them address different functions of the ministry Neither louise nor uh albert lopez's mit grad student have uncovered contracts in their archival work at the scope And although traces of her murals appear as illustrations in the ministry's annual reports I've I've so i've so far been unable to determine their specific location within the complex or exactly what the process of the commission Was for these for these works Two of the murals opening roads and railways depict the transportation systems funded and administered by that ministry Especially uh in the right the uh national railways of mexico which had been nationalized in 1938 In each images of roads tracks and airport construction crews are placed into a landscape With strong diagonals leading back to the horizon or to the future The same worker with a jackhammer same one Appears in both um The central section of both murals Perhaps somehow to connect them at least conceptually although I do think they were associated with different spaces One obviously in an office that was in the road department and the other one in the railway department space in the building The railway image like all of lola's photo murals emphasizes positive industrial industrialized development There's absolutely no hint here of the crisis that was going to lead to a violent series of strikes by the railway workers in 1958 59 Which was one of the first cracks In the post-revolutionary regime Was this railway strike of 58 59? The compositions are far denser than the social security project on the stairway if it in fact proceeds them and I I speculate that it's later because the compositions are far more complex The viewer now is required to work harder to make sense of the fragments Than than in the earlier the earlier project These images like lola's other photo murals and following earlier precedents Express modernity through radical new perspectives and shifts in scale and dramatic shadows Such murals express the cosmopolitanism and rationalism of her bureaucratic patrons their faith in technological and scientific progress And in new forms of social organization that emphasize the machine over man For although the human figure is present he or she is generally overwhelmed by the montage rather than surging forth from it Three other photo murals for the scope combined further references to external functions There's a railway bridge one place and camp don't have time to point out all these details out radio towers the highway patrol I can't remember where they are, but they're there somewhere. Um, I can't remember Anyway With evidence of the internal bureaucracy, so there's references to sort of the external functions outside of the outside of the ministry But then to the internal functions Computer punch cards, which I think gave rise to the fact that in the literature these are Titled computers, but there's no evidence that these were titles that were given to them by lola alvarez bravo There's computer punch cards adding machines Filing and printing equipment and even images of the white collar technocrats Sitting at their modern steel desks and you can see them like one guy right here for example There's also daycare workers doctors machine operators mailman paymasters and One of these images the one you see this like light gray one Is only documented. It's not doesn't print of it doesn't exist in lola's own archive But it appeared on the cover of one of the scope annual reports and Luis found this for me and as it also shows the model of a brain You can see there's the brain is all over the place here. There's the plastic brain the plastic brain I can't yeah, there's the brain the brain the you know This anatomical model of the human head As well as the out-of-scale photographs of hands holding pens or operating dials Are optimistic references to the guiding genius Behind all the bureaucratic decisions being made there at the scope Including the decision to hire lola alvarez bravo as a muralist Even more self-referential are fragments of the scope building itself Including the ornamented facade for example, there it is right there And you can see the scope building as well appearing within the mural itself A photograph the photograph on the cover of the bulletin Superimposes a graphic chart that states that the scope's essential purpose And thus I think the underlying theme of all the five photo murals is quote the coordination and improvement of tasks Of construction planning administration and operation At the scope lola alvarez bravo's elegies to modern systems of communication governance and efficiency Contrast with all the references to the past on the exterior of the building Which ground the ministry's functions in mexico's pre columbian And colonial and 19th century religion history and also in catholic religion alvarez bravo worked occasionally for mexico's booming corporate sector At the time participating on advertising campaigns sponsored by multinationals selenice and olivetti And she created at least three photo murals for corporate offices in mexico city Including one now lost no visual reference survives for the cementos anahuac a leading mexican company With obvious ties to the construction industry. I mean if you're doing work for the big new government ministry They're probably buying cement from that company. So the head of the company finds out you're doing murals and brings you over I mean, it's a small world to mexico in the 1950s In her photo mural for a textile company ilados del norte or threads of the north Located in the industrial center of monterey The company that was founded in 1947 as part of the post war boom in that city The symmetrical composition announces corporate stability with almost no acknowledgement or barely any acknowledgement of the working class At the center machine parts and disembodied hands holding spools of thread like victory torches As well as the mountainous landscape in the background Which features the saddleback ridge that's a symbol of monterey are presented almost as if in a mirror image It's not exactly a mirror image Creating that sort of spinal cord for the flanking sections Which emphasize the details of the spinning machines which were essential to that thread manufacturing Unlike most of lola's other mural projects her commission for fabricus auto mechs a subsidiary of the chrysler automobile company Was was actually discussed in the period and illustrated in the period This photo mural was designed for a new office building adjacent to the company's mexico city assembly plant Which had been designed by the architects lorenzo carrasco and Guillermo rocel The structure which no longer survives included an exterior mural by david al feroce caros This is this sort of disc like form here Which is an example of how the corporate sector in mexico in the 1950s was adopting the theories of integration plastica Which had first been developed for government buildings Including housing blocks the project was featured in the february issue of espacios This architecture magazine which was directed by architect Guillermo rocel whose building was featured in the magazine And the advertisement for chrysler appeared in the magazine Which reveals at this time a very tight interwoven circle of architects designers patrons editors corporations and artists In which lola found herself Now here because it was featured in this article We have an image from the period of the mural in situ in this in the main meeting room the sala de juntas With furniture designed by clara porcette. There's a cuban born leading industrial designer in mexico As well as the architectural project including the interior design elements The spread the article in in espacios featured lola's only period or any Only statement about photo murals in which she In that in that short very short essay she insists for the importance of photography Alongside painting and sculpture in projects involving integration plastica. So she explicitly puts herself in with wanogorman and all these other male artists who were the main proponents along with architects of integrating The visual with the architectural The photo mural is structured according to dynamic baroque vectors that situate scenes of automotive assembly between high rises on the paseo de la reforma here on the left and these Excuse me and With these girders conveyor belts and repeated fenders. These are car fenders over here Over on on the right the composition which according to the artist Had the theme of the force of man and machine at the service through industry of the modern city resembles much less Diego Rivera's own images of a modern automobile plant From the early 1930s and his famous detroit industry murals From the detroit institute of arts resembles much less this Than this which is a detail from renows 1941 never completed photo mural for the mexican electrician syndicate But while renow shows the shirtless worker Surging triumphantly out of turbulent protest Clutching the skeletal hand of fascism, which is here Get him Here here the naked semi naked worker surges out But his ballet simply ensures the production of consumer goods Now in the pages of espacios. I found another Series of illustrations of photo murals in a corporate office building. This is for the A building known a company called industrias eléctricas de mexico was in tlana pantla. It was an appliance manufacturer Which was actually one of the early projects of the architect riccardo legoreta But there's no credit in this spread to who the artist is And this project is not listed in the in lola's sort of little biography of her project So it's unclear, but I believe they're probably very much likely by her and so i'm going to have to do a little bit more Work on that Lola alvarez bravo's links to the most powerful figures of post-war mexico are further confirmed by her commissions for the Universidad feminina a woman's university founded in 1943 by adela formoso A leading feminist she actually is featured in a famous painting by frida collo Who happened to be married to architect carlos obergon santa celia? So you can see how this these networks are getting her commissions She also painted a mural for the mexico city law offices Of odwire Bernstein and correa which I would hardly mention Except that odwire Was a former ambassador to mexico who was a former mexico city mayor And was a close associate of miguel aleman Former president of mexico and that those were in his office and the law offices were done at least by 1953 And I haven't found images of that law office commission I want to conclude with a brief mention of just one other project by lola alvarez bravo Which is the only one of these photo murals, which is given really a specific title by her in that list Uh that she produces in the in the pamphlet architectural anarchy in mexico city It's also her most widely reproduced photo montage of the 1950s She returned here to a compositional strategy. She had explored in the 1930s on the cover of frente a frente And again in 1946 in the government publication on the On the president's government administration and she also however in in in all of these may have been inspired by this Photo montage by a guy named thurman rotan, which appeared in a MoMA catalog of 1933 that talked about photo murals And I think lola like manuel were extremely sophisticated I don't think she went to MoMA to see the show But these catalogs these MoMA catalog circulated widely they were printed in big runs and So she might have she might have been inspired by that But she certainly can see that she's picking up on this photo montage idea that she had already explored in in 1946 although Architectural anarchy in mexico city and that is lola's original title. It appears in that pamphlet Was featured on the cover of architect mario panis magazine architectura mexico in september 1955 The original title seems to me to indicate a possible critique of all of this skyscraper development that was going up in the post-war period Because while the buildings in the photo montage rest on firm bedrock You can see that lava down here. That's the lava of the This vast zone known as el pedra gall where barragan built his suburban housing Development where the national university was built the crisp lead delineated towers above among them the national lottery building and Here and mario panis own hotel plaza here the torre latino americana here These are really some of the iconic famous buildings in mexico as long alongside other apartment and office blocks They all seem to be jostling for space crowding out this poor little equestrian sculpture of simon bolivar over here and Totally overwhelming any sense of the human scale. There's some people walking along here some cars parked along here Dwarfing all of that in the lower level and not stable But rather seeming to tilt which in a city like mexico city Where we have earthquakes is something that you never want to see or feel is a building in any way off center not perpendicular to the ground So I think for a mexico city audience in particular There's something unnerving not not about the dynamism of the modern city But about the shifting scale of the and in a longer version of this. I mean there's a lot of other images that could talk about This photo mural actually sorry about the bad quality of the images on the right, but this photo mural actually appeared in the Is a backdrop in the set depicting an architect's office in a 1955 film called La Rival or the rival Which was discovered These images were discovered by a phd student named cristobal andres. Hakume at ut The magazine cover and the film are both from 1955 But according to the artist in that pamphlet Relying on that pamphlet the photo mural was quote presented in paris And I speculate that it might have been made for the major exhibition of mexican art organized in 1952 by mexican curator fernando gamboa And shown at the paleo de tokyo at that time because gamboa commissioned several mexican artists to make large-scale paintings for that for that show In the pamphlet lola says that it was displayed for six years in the palacio de beyes artis I don't have any further documentation But it would have then If it were true It would have shared hallowed space there with painted murals by revera orosco and sequeros lola alvarez lola alvarez bravos Sorry, lola alvarez bravos photo murals Represent the most important public works of art produced by a mexican woman artist in the 1950s But they also form part of a surprisingly extended and international and surprisingly extended territory Of mexican production whose contours are only slowly being fully understood and documented In which other less well-known artists also participated Raul estrada discua A Honduras born photographer long employed at the unams At the at the university created photo murals for a construction company on the reforma avenue As well as photo murals for several mexico city exhibitions And these two images show photo murals by a woman named maria tereza mendez Who later became a prominent furniture designer not a modernist furniture designer. It's pretty Kind of neocolonial-ish if you want to even call it that But she produced in the 50s Photo murals as well perhaps Also under the guidance of fernando gamboa She created at least three for the mexican section at the milan trina trinale curated by mexican architect mauricio gomas mayorga in 1957 58 Where claire porcette presented furniture designs. This is a design by claire porcette here And for many years These have been published. There's two or three Images of this exhibition with these big photo murals and everybody thought it was an exhibition that claire porcette had done for mexico city's palacio de bellas artes And they are always were credited to lola alvarez bravo But recently scholars have discovered that they were by this woman maria tereza mendez She also was responsible for these photo enlargements At the for the mexican pavilion at the brussels world fair in 1958 In 1964 however There was just one sad photo mosaic, which no longer survives Which depicted mexico's different indigenous groups Installed in the introductory gallery of the new museo nacional de antropología Built by pedro rumirez vasquez, which opened in 1964 to international acclaimed acclaim Photo murals i think were considered Beyond this sort of document of different mexican indians indigenous groups Other within that Photography was considered unworthy of the main exhibition halls of that national showpiece And instead old-fashioned frescoes and monumental oil paintings would serve as the backdrops to the glories of mexico's Pre-columbian past and to the richness of its current ethnographic cultures More surprisingly lola herself completely abandoned the practice Perhaps in part because of shifting government contracts Or contacts fewer mural programs being installed in state buildings or her own Renewed focus on what she called her art photography Were it not for a couple articles in espacios? And that surviving pamphlet I'd have barely had enough evidence to even craft this essay And many questions still remain Um, why were they not better discussed and documented in the period? Do any of them survive in the hidden closets of some government ministry or office building? These are questions. I can't answer yet And what that make this really a continuing and still exciting research project. Thank you all I don't know if anybody has A question or wants to go eat dinner. I mean Well, you know murals were being done in in mexican hotels I don't know the first ones probably around 1932. We already start to see them. Diego Rivera does a couple Hotel mural projects one in the 1930s. That's very famous and another in the 40s. I haven't found any evidence Of lola working in the in the in the tourist industry, you know, like tourist pamphlets or Any of that kind of material which i'm pretty familiar with and and and um Would study quite a bit up or in any hotels and and what i've been able to Kind of figure out is that There's a lot of surviving images in her archive And then there's this list and there's a couple other things and i've kind of Figured out all of the ones at least that there's any historical evidence for her doing I think if she'd done any in a hotel, she probably would have had a list in that pamphlet Because the pamphlet seems to be pretty complete So no, I don't have any evidence that she worked for the hotel industry. Although she I I'm sure she wanted to Destained it, you know and not in this period. I have no idea how much she was paid for these projects um I You know, I have no there's no trace of it. It's it's just it's I have to just say it's unbelievable to me That alivier de broyes who knew her so well and interviewed her so extensively on the photo murals Never pursued it. I mean he was a great scholar and a great art historian that he never pushed her like where were they lola? Where you know, what did nothing? So I I think she I'm not I'm not sure she kind of disdained to this practice. Maybe she just didn't see it as art You know and that in the later years she really wanted to emphasize her art photography To position herself like manuel is sort of a major art figure rather than somebody who had done these pro-government pro-corporate not very politically Revolutionary images No, there's she had you know, this is a woman who had who um Who had many many friends in the uh, you know, she was friends with everyone in mexico city She took almost everybody's portrait. She was intimate friends with people like rafino to my own his wife and she knew everybody You know in mexico city, she wasn't writing letters to these people because they were all in mexico city No personal letters in her archive and I don't know if this is because She destroyed them Although we did find some love letters from manuel to her that are very uninteresting, you know My dear, you know Love bunny. You're so beautiful. You know they're for a historian. They're kind of uninteresting She did save those though One thing I have to say is that when lola was so so we don't have a lot of evidence um What we do know, you know, she was in the lair in this league of revolutionary Writers and artists, but everybody joined that around 1934 in mexico city I mean even to my every single artist many of whom Distained politics advocated art for art's sake. What was called in mexico pure art They all joined that bandwagon in 34 35 and the threat to fascism the fear of the changes taking place in the world We're so pressing at that moment that everybody got involved and then you know With all of the shifting Politics of the 30s and the communist party going this way and that way and the hit were stall unpacked You know so many people just drifted away from the party after that initial Moment of enthusiasm. I don't have any evidence. She ever joined the mexican communist party, for example at all So I think she was a nice girl From a nice family nice background who like many people in the 30s briefly Started to do some political imagery manuel over his bravo Also did two or three political images around that time rufino tamayo Just two or three political images of worker strikes and Protest right around that time and then they all abandoned it and went back to a sort of more art for art's sake art for art's sake approach and certainly her friends in later years tended to be Members of those of you, you know know anything about mexican art But this group of writers and artists around a magazine called the contemporaneous who were the they were the ones advocating pure art Art for art's sake that was her intimate circle She was closer to them than she was to people like revera or sequeros even though she was friends with those artists as well You are you judged by who your friends are, you know, if you don't leave any other documentation Yeah, that's a that's a that's a very hard one to say again. What I what I think is that the The political demands the fears that people had in the world In the 30 particularly around the time of hitler coming to power 33 Were such that a lot of people were shocked into Wondering and because of the great depression wondering whether in fact capitalism was going to continue And whether it was in fact going to continue well enough to even to protect the basic needs of the of the society And there were a lot of there was a lot of doubt even from the capitalist sector even from the right There were doubts about whether capitalism Was it going to be an effective economic system? Given the depression and the threat of fascism facing the world By the 19 by the post war period capitalism is triumphant And the united states is triumphant and the this developmentalist approach to building economies is turning out perfect Buildings are rising factories are being built the consumer economy is thriving And so there's a much more optimistic view about capital In the night late 40s and 50s then there is in the mid 30s for for you know, just Obvious reasons. So I think that probably explains a lot of it As well as the fact that I I truly doubt that her commitment to the left Was that deep? I don't want to say that it was Superficial or you know flippant, but You know, it wasn't it doesn't get maintained the way it does for people like Diego Rivera, sequeros They're committed to the cause all the way till their death But not for low-low or many of her contemporaries Okay, thank you all for coming