Map of Mexico City by Carlos Mérida 1935 AP479

Provenance: Private Collection

Artist Carlos Mérida created this eye-popping mouth-watering golden-age map of Mexico City. Killer. 26? x 21? framed.
Map of Mexico City and Valley Business Directory, 1935, by Carlos Merida and published by Frances Toor Studios, and the associated envelope. Carlos Merida was a Guatemalan artist who joined a Mexican mural painting school and worked with fellow artist Diego Rivera circa 1919. Along with Rivera, Orozoco, and Siqueiros, Merida helped establish the Union of Workers, Technicians, Painters and Sculptors. At various points in his career, Merida’s work reflected the Maya and Zapotec heritage of his native village, geometric designs, elements of Surrealism, and an interest in various art mediums, like glass. American-born Frances Toor (1890-1956) became interested in Mexico’s indigenous cultures and folk traditions while traveling in Mexico in the early 1920s as she worked on her Master’s thesis. In 1925 in Mexico City she started the bilingual cultural magazine ‘Mexican Folkways,’ which remained in publication for 12 years. From her studio in Mexico City, Toor edited various tourist guides, “A Motorist Guide to Mexico” (1938), a volume titled “Mexican Popular Arts” (1939), and “A Treasury of Mexican Folkways,” first edited by Crown Publishers in 1947. (Sources: Carlos Merida (Guatemala, 1891 – 1984), 2014, LatinAmericanArt.com; Schuessler, Michael K. Frances Toor and Mexican Folkways, Inside Mexico, March 2003, Editorial Manda.)

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