Dallas Museum of Art Woman in Field of Flowers
When Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson declared January 26, 2022, Octavio Medellín Day, he honored the artist whose fingerprints are all over North Texas.
The Dallas Museum of Art continues that commemoration with Octavio Medellín: Spirit and Form, an exhibition exploring his influence on the Texas art scene through his fine art and instruction.
"Octavio Medellín was a bang-up artist and a very influential mentor and an exemplary citizen of Dallas," said Dr. Agustin Arteaga, the museum's Eugene McDermott Director.
Featuring approximately 80 works, the exhibition is on view through January xv.
"Medellín believed that each material had a unique soul that should guide artists as they gave their ideas class," said Dr. Mark A. Castro, The Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin Art and curator of the exhibition. "At the aforementioned fourth dimension, he felt compelling art drew in the strengths of the artists in spirit, instilled in the work during the creation. For Medellín, it was the mixing of class and that intangible spirit that gave art the power to movement hearts and minds."
Jay Simmons
Born in Matehuala, San Luis Potosí, Mexico, Medellín'southward family unit immigrated to San Antonio in 1920 to escape the uncertainty following the Mexican Revolution. When he briefly studied at the Fine art Found of Chicago, he focused on painting.
The Scene
"He learned to carve on his ain. I call back he had probably a lot of lessons at home," Castro said. "He famously said he just experimented. He found his voice on his own."
He returned to Mexico City later hearing about the flourishing art scene and encountered some of the nearly important artists of Mexican Modernism.
He traveled through the countryside along the Gulf Coast, meeting artisans working in rural areas.
When he returned to San Antonio, he began creating sculptures in wood, clay, and stone.
Manor of Octavio Medellin
Spirit of the Revolution, crafted out of Texas limestone in 1932, reflects history's complexities.
"He'south thinking back on the Mexican Revolution, which had such a pivotal impact on his life only also on the direction of which the country is going, at present ten years after that conflict," Castro said.
The sculpture features three allegorical characters: a soldier, representing those fighting for freedom; a snake, representing ancient heritage; and a woman with her arms raised in blessing, representing touch of Catholicism and Europeanism. The three figures are intertwined, suggesting a circuitous national identity.
"What I love about this work is it is a veritable tangle of relationships," Castro said. "He understood how messy history is."
Dallas Museum of Fine art
The Hanged is ane of Medellín's hitting works. The figure with a noose around his cervix was a common sight during his babyhood in Mexico.
"For him, it was a memory," Castro said. The work was also evocative of the lynching of minority men during the Jim Crow era of his adopted country.
The iconic imagery of The Hanged appears in The History of Mexico, a carved column of Honduras red mahogany fluidly depicting the nation's ancient era, Castilian conquest, the Mexican Revolution and Reconstruction.
"It's an astonishing work because it really invites your participation. You have to walk around it to really run across it," Castro said. "It also evokes Mexican murals with this idea of moving around a space to tell a story."
The History of Mexico appears every bit if it is a seamless carving of the nation's turbulent history.
Medellín's work caught the attention of fine art patron Lucy Maverick. She paid his salary so he could focus solely on art, and she support his 1938 trip to Yucatán to study the Maya ruins at Chichén Itzá. The trip inspired drawings, prints and decorative objects.
Even as his works became more abstract in his later career and he experimented with mediums such as printmaking, pottery, mosaic, and stained glass, Medellín returned to the motifs he encountered on this trip.
"It was this moment in his life that he talked about frequently and that kept affecting his work on and on," Castro said.
A 1938 trip to Mexico influence Medellin'southward works for his entire career.
Medellín taught throughout his career, leaving a living legacy of artists. He taught at Due north Texas Country Teacher's College (now the University of North Texas) and SMU. In 1945, he began his 21-year tenure at the Dallas Museum of Art'south schoolhouse. He opened the Octavio Medellín School of Sculpture in Oak Cliff in 1966. The school is now called the Creative Arts Center and is in Eastward Dallas.
More than twenty years later on his expiry, Medellín is considered a beloved mentor and guide.
"Every former colleague, peer or student that I've met has a story of the moment when Octavio Medellín inspired or challenged them, pushing them to grow and detect their artistic voice," Castro said.
This exhibition also highlights Medellín's public works with preparatory drawings and photographs from the artist's personal archives. Among the color drawings of completed works is a proposal rejected by a local Episcopal Church. The drawings included a annotation almost why the church did not motion forrard with Medellín's concept of candlesticks and baptismal font.
"They didn't like that it was so, equally they put information technology, blusterous, non solid enough and not traditional plenty," Castro said. "And they were very clear that they felt he was uncompromising. You start to run across these moments where he really chooses to keep his principals on how he wants to work."
Drawings of Medellin'south public works are included in this exhibition.
Medellín's public works are still part Texan's everyday lives: the mosaic murals at St. Bernard of Clairvaux Catholic Church building near White Rock Lake; the fused-drinking glass window at the University Catholic Center in Austin; and a serial of fused-glass windows salvaged from the now-demolished Trinity Lutheran Church building in Dallas that are at present installed at the Moody Performance Hall and Love Field Drome.
"They are literally part of our customs, bringing people joy, offering solace and enriching their daily lives," Castro said.
Larn more at https://dma.org/art/exhibitions/octavio-medellin-spirit-and-form.
Source: https://www.nbcdfw.com/entertainment/the-scene/dallas-museum-of-art-celebrates-sculptor-who-carved-out-his-legacy-in-north-texas/2918704/
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