Guadalajara’s magnificent Museo de las Artes (Juarez and Enrique Diaz de Leon) is hosting an exhibit to mark the centenary of the birth of Mathias Goeritz, a sculptor of German origin who left a considerable artistic legacy in this country, including Guadalajara.
Born in Danzig (now in Poland), Goeritz relocated from Madrid to Guadalajara in 1949 after he was offered a job teaching art history to the students of the city’s newly founded Escuela de Arquitectura (School of Architecture). In 1953 he moved to Mexico City, where he carried out a series of abstract public sculptures, the most well-known being the Satellite City Towers and the Animal of the Pedregal in collaboration with another famous Tapatio architect, Luis Barragan. Goeritz was a prolific artist whose trailblazing, European-influenced modernist ideas provided an fresh alternative to Mexico’s nationalist school of art of the 1930s and 40s.