Roberto Montenegro

(Guadalajara, Jalisco, 1885 – Pátzcuaro, 1968)

Untitled (Science and Technology)

n.d.

oil on panel

300 x 300 cm

Inv. no. CAB093

BBVA Collection Mexico



Everything seems to indicate that this painting, originally part of a triptych and treated with the emphasis of a mural, may be dated to the 1950s. In Science and Technology Montenegro tackles a thematic field he had not explored until then. By now he had left behind the trauma caused by the Second World War and orientalist-inflected symbolism. What remained however was an ornamental drive, which he would confirm in his easel paintings, as well as the secular allusions and some motifs taken from Pre-Hispanic times (for instance, the tepetlacalli or stone box for storing ritual utensils related with sacrifices, from the Mexican cult devoted to Quetzalcoatl).

In his early murals, Montenegro depicted indigenous archetypes from rural life. Here, he supressed those peasant characters to make way for urbanites with indigenous, mixed-race or white features: in a civic syncretism of sorts, he makes the iron and steel worker coexist with the mother of a proletarian family or a laboratory scientist. In this allegoric approach, with the artist’s drawing abiding by academicist precision, the characters presiding the composition at the centre of the paintings are given an idealised appearance resulting from a blend of indigenous peoples, gods from the Olympus and models from bodybuilding magazines.

The finish of this panel is characteristic of Montenegro’s mature period. With a vertical composition, it follows the ascending rhythm of the Pre-Hispanic stele (an obsession of Montenegro’s from the mid-century onwards) and expands in the sketchy forms of the background, with hints of geometric arrangement and volumetric effects. The allegory extols the virtues of progress. It goes beyond the nationalism of the post-revolution period, aimed at convincing a mass audience of the need to “forge a motherland” and it takes on the didactic function of conveying an edifying lesson on modernism.