The Making of a Surrealist Mecca
From Parisian cafes to the jungles of the Sierra Gorda, Surrealism found a vibrant second life in Mexico in the post-war period, shaping Mexico's landscape, culture, and artists.
I arrived at Jardín Escultórico Edward James around lunchtime, and the air was so humid I could almost taste it. The sculpture garden emerges mysteriously in the foothills of the Sierra Gorda mountain range — its forms include stairs to nowhere, mysterious portals and sinuous motifs from gothic churches, enlarged to hundreds of times their original size. They were planned around enormous trees and naturally occurring waterfalls which lend the park its alternative name, “Las Pozas” (the pools) and a permanent, crashing soundtrack.
If you wish to visit the park, you should do so in the next few years. Now 50 years old, parts of it can no longer take the weight of visitors’ feet. That’s no matter, since this wasn’t created for the public — but in the noble and pointless name of Surrealism. According to the park’s creator, Edward James, the work would not be complete until the sculptures had been completely taken back by rainforest.
Eleni Mavrandoni
The rise and (alleged) fall of European Surrealism
Codified in 1924, Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement founded in the fashionable cafes of post-WWI Paris. It glorified dreams, psychoanalysis and all things irrational, proposing that freeing the mind could be a path to political liberation. It was simultaneously over-theorised and bawdy — Surrealism boasted countless manifestos and journals, yet many of its early works centred on “woman” as an object, a conduit to unknowable truths.
Mexico is the Surrealist place par excellence
According to the first book to canonise the Surrealists’ story, Maurice Nadeau’s The History of Surrealism, the movement died with WWII. Global warfare dealt Surrealism a double blow. On the one hand, its ideology was rendered irrelevant: how could anyone praise the revolutionary power of introspection in light of violent world events? On the other hand, the movement’s key writers and artists were persecuted under fascism, their works dubbed ‘degenerate’ for being seen to contradict the values of Nazism. Many Surrealists fled Paris for the Americas, Mexico being the second most popular destination after the US.
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André Breton, the writer and poet known as Surrealism’s “Pope”, declared Mexico "the Surrealist place par excellence." He believed that the Surrealist spirit arose organically there due to the country’s landscape, its diverse communities, and the (relatively) progressive nature of its government during the interwar period. Mexico’s then-president, Làzaro Cárdenas, initiated an open-door policy for Europeans fleeing war, with particular leniency for intellectuals and artists. Some 15,000 refugees moved there, among them Surrealists like Kati Horna, Benjamin Peret and Remedios Varo — whose artistic production continued both during and after the war. Its declared death notwithstanding, Surrealism found a second life in exile.
Edward James dreams of Rainforest Surrealism
Construction of Jardín Escultórico Edward James began in 1962, and was still ongoing when James died in 1984. James (1907–1984) was the definition of a rich eccentric, heir to multiple fortunes and perhaps even the illegitimate grandson of King Edward VII. Despite his best efforts as a poet, his primary contribution to Surrealism was his deep pockets. He funded journals and exhibitions, patronising many of the inner circle, including Dalí and Magritte.
When war broke out, he travelled to the region of Sonora, where he met (and, by some accounts, fell in love with) a telegraph office worker called Plutarco Gastélum. The two men travelled together to the town of Xilitla in San Luís Potosí, where they were bathing in the natural pools of Las Pozas when a swarm of butterflies encircled them both. Ever the Surrealist myth-maker, James took this as a sign to buy the estate they were exploring. It was to become the site of the sculpture garden.
Chris Martz
Despite his ambitions for the artwork, James only lived in Xilitla a few weeks of the year, spending most of his time traveling between properties and friends abroad. He translated his vision for Rainforest Surrealism to Gastéleum, who managed the project, via doodles and instructions scrawled on postcards. For his part, Gastéleum married a woman local to Xilitla and raised a family in the Las Pozas estate. His children referred to James as “Uncle Eduardo.”
When James died, his will did not account for maintenance of the sculpture park, which fell into disrepair until a foundation took it over in the 2000s. The story of Edward James’ sculpture park then, does little to allay claims that post-WWII Surrealism was vain and irrelevant—though whether due to the patina of age or the audacity of building a sculpture park in such a naturally beautiful location, it does have an aura of magic.
On Leonora Carrington’s footsteps
Many of the Paris Surrealists who moved to Mexico during the wartime had more established artistic credentials than James. Leonora Carrington, for example, was a renowned Surrealist painter and writer. At the outbreak of war, her partner, Max Ernst, was sent to an internment camp, and she suffered a nervous breakdown. Carrington’s family committed her to a mental hospital in Spain, a harrowing experience she recounted in her novel, Down Below. Fortunately, she was able to escape to Mexico in 1942, where she joined up with an existing clique of European Surrealists.
Barna Tanko
Carrington is best known for mysterious paintings on occult themes, which James once described as “not merely painted but brewed.” Though her works most often borrow images from Celtic mythology she learned in childhood, she found new inspiration in her adopted culture. Her 1964 mural, The Magical World of the Mayans, commissioned by the Ethnographic Hall of Mayan Culture of the National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico, depicts the three kingdoms of the Mayan world. To research it, she trekked through the countryside of Chiapas, meeting villagers and learning about how Mayan beliefs had become intertwined with the Catholicism of the 16th century Spanish invaders.
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The next stop on my Surrealist tour was Museo Leonora Carrington in San Luis Potosí, a museum entirely dedicated to the artists’ sculptures: bronze renderings of the chimeras and moon-faced spirits that populate her paintings. A former prison built on Bentham’s panopticon model, the museum’s architecture is as austere as the sculptures are whimsical. Clusters of Carrington’s creatures are arranged in cells, as if holding secret meetings.
christophertp92
Carrington began working with bronze in her late 70s, when her dentist gifted her some dental wax and modelling instruments, and helped her engage a foundry to scale up her works. Unfortunately, these sculptures are fraught with attribution issues, on the grounds that Carrington apparently worked into very old age — but then, attribution issues are common for bronze works in general, since the process generally involves a team of contributors.
Mexico’s “Surrealist” Spirit
Carrington, like James, enjoyed artistic success in Mexico partly she was afforded the freedoms that come with outsider status. But what of insiders: Mexican-born Surrealists? There were writers and artists who identified with Surrealism, notably the poet Otavio Paz (with whom, incidentally, Carrington had an affair) and the painter Rufino Tamayo. However, when many of the Paris circle moved over in the early 1940s, Surrealism wasn’t at the forefront of the country’s avant-garde.
They are so damn “intellectual” and rotten that I can't stand them!
Mexican art was dominated by Los Tres Grandes: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Siqueiros: three muralists whose paintings extolled Mexican nationalism and the country’s indigenous heritage. They were proud to operate outside of the European bubble, drawing inspiration from their own nation rather than following the fashions of an invading continent. Therefore, there were fewer connections forged between the leading Mexican artists of the day and the Paris Surrealists that might be expected.
Gill_figueroa
One notable exception was, of course, Frida Kahlo and her husband, Riviera, who befriended and exhibited alongside many of the Paris Surrealists. Though Kahlo is remembered as the foremost Surrealist painter, when she had few kind words to say about the group when she first met them in 1939, writing to her then-lover: “You have no idea the kind of bitches these people are…They are so damn “intellectual” and rotten that I can't stand them. I would rather sit on the floor of the market of Toluca and sell tortillas than have anything to do with those “artistic” bitches of Paris.”
Kahlo was already painting in her inimitable symbolic, self-confessional style when Breton first visited Mexico and told her she was a Surrealist. Many of her works combine a Surrealist visual language with the romantic nationalism and political teeth of her husband’s school of painting. Take, for example, her Self-Portrait on the Border Between Mexico and the United States (1932), where the artist stands between a hallucinatory preindustrial Mexico and the overdeveloped US. Whilst the nonsensical arrangement of imagery feels Surreal, the painting is also a celebration of pre-Columbian heritage. The goddess sculpture on the left has been identified as Coatlicue, an earth-mother Aztec goddess who frequently appears in Kahlo’s work. No visit to Surrealist Mexico is complete without a visit to Kahlo’s former home in Mexico City, La Casa Azul.
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It seems broadly true that Surrealism as a codified movement didn't survive the trip across the Atlantic — the supposed arch-Surrealist, Kahlo, described colorfully how little she wanted to do with the group. Yet, Mexico is rich in artworks and irresistible stories connected to the movement’s afterlife. More surreal-ish than Surrealist, the best of these late works blended with influences from Mexican culture and the nation’s contemporary art scene to become fresher and more relevant.
R.M. Nunes
Where to experience Surrealism in Mexico
To visit these sites, I recommend starting in Mexico city with Museo Frida Kahlo — it’s best to book tickets in advance to avoid disappointment. You can then fly or take a six-hour bus to the city of San Luís Potosí, where you’ll find the Museo Leonora Carrington. If you’ve got extra time, the National Mask Museum is interesting too. From there, take another bus or drive to Xilitla, where you’ll find not only Jardín Escultórico Edward James, but also a small museum dedicated to Carrington.
