Text by Daniel Garza-Usabiaga

During the second half of the 1950s, while living in Mexico, German-born art historian and artist Mathias Goeritz began the production of a series of works that, with time, became known as Mensajes (Messages). The first pieces of this series consisted of old and used fragments of scrap metal that were perforated, nailed and adhered to different wooden surfaces. Some of these supports were painted and their colors could be seen through the holes in the metal sheets. AlthoughMensajes is the definitive name given to this group of works, Goeritz originally referred to them as clavados (nailed) and sudarios (shrouds), two names that are explicit of the religious intent that the artist wanted to give to this series. Shortly after he began executing these nailed and perforated pieces, he also embarked on the production of other works for the series that are characterized by their monochromatic golden surfaces. He referred to these works, covered with gold leaf, as Mensajes metacromáticos (Metachromatic messages) as they carried a “meaning” beyond the presence of color. For the artist, these messages were representations of nothingness and the absolute; through the luminosity of the gold leaf he sought to actualize a traditional relation between spirituality and light.

The Messages are part of a larger redefinition within Goeritz’s artistic and discursive practices that took place during the second half of the fifties. In these years, he also began collaborating in renovation projects of old Catholic churches. For these, he designed modernist stained glass panels that played with light and different colors in order to create chromatic atmospheres – from the traditional amber to a daring blue – within the interiors of the old temples. Goeritz, along other artists and architects like his friend Ricardo de Robina, participated in a radical actualization of religious art and architecture that took in place in Mexico and that anticipated the aesthetic renovations brought by the Second Vatican Council. The artist presented the Messages as modern religious art in line with the epoch. The architect Luis Barragán, for example, bought and commissioned several of these works. The non-objective nature of the pieces made them ideal for his own solutions of modern architecture, as they could integrate with and expand upon the spatial scenes of his constructions. This can be appreciated, for instance, in the Metachromatic Message that Barragán acquired in the 1950s and that hangs above the iconic stairs of his own residence in Mexico City.

Moreover, from 1958, Goeritz began to contribute regularly and serve as editor of the Art Section of Mario Pani’s magazine Arquitectura México. In his texts, the artist began to demand a new art that ran against the grain of the sense of novelty, speed and disorientation characteristic of modern times. On the 17th of March 1960, for example, he boycotted the presentation of Jean Tinguely’s Homage to New York at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He stood outside of the museum and distributed the manifesto “PLEASE STOP!” in which he condemned self-destructive art and proposed, instead, a constructive art built on stable referents. Later, he would assert that God was the most stable of all. Two years after his public act at the MoMA, Goeritz presented, in this same city, his show Messages at the Carstairs Gallery, where he regularly exhibited. For that occasion, Goeritz transformed the gallery into an atmospheric situation with several golden works (Dorados) exhibited with a dramatic and punctual illumination whilst the rest of space remained obscured. This created a spatial scene with a particular luminosity, bathed in the amber reflection that is proper of the interaction of gold and light. As with his stained glass works in Catholic temples, in this exhibition he experimented with lighting in order to articulate a luminous environment.

As Jennifer Josten has analyzed, Goeritz was of prime importance for the introduction in Mexico of the practices of the European neo avant-garde. In his first articles published in Arquitectura México, the artist placed special attention to German post-war art and discussed on more than one occasion the production of the collective ZERO. Goeritz’s Messages share some characteristics with the work of Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker, such as the use of reflective surfaces, metal sheets, nails and an interest in light and luminosity. However, in his work there is no optimism in the use of new industrial materials or new technologies as can be found in the work of the members of ZERO. Instead, his use of scrap metals and traditional techniques such as the application of gold leaf signal his preference for a different tempo as well as a certain disillusionment for the sense of progress within modernity. It is important to note that Goeritz’s dialogues with the production of the European neo avant-gardes allowed him to establish transatlantic connections that showcased his work in cities such as London and Paris while simultaneously placing Mexico within the grid of these international networks of Post-War art. In some of these platforms, the work of the German-Mexican artist was presented without making reference to its religious undertones – as happened with the bulletin SIGNALS edited in London.

Goeritz continued to produce his series of Messages for the rest of his career. The format and scale of the works varied with time. He produced tridimensional objects covered in gold leaf that sometimes were exhibited a la par of the Dorados. Goeritz kept as part of his own collection a group of geometric figures covered with gold leaf, such as cubes and spheres, which perhaps functioned as building blocks for larger projects. In terms of scale, he produced Messages as murals. After settling in Mexico in 1949, Goeritz was a consistent critic of Muralism, not so much in regards to such a medium being used for public art but in terms of the content and style of representation demanded by the so-called Mexican School. In order to highlight new ways to understand and produce murals as well as to integrate them with architecture, he began a practice as a muralist as early as in 1952. In 1968, he produced a Message as mural (Abstracto en dorado) for the Hotel Camino Real designed by Ricardo Legorreta. He realized other large-scale works for Catholic temples and synagogues as well as gold leaf covered altars, such as his collaboration with Barragán in the chapel of the Convent of the Sacramentary Capuchin Nuns in Tlalpan. The contrast between an altar and a work of art in an international chain hotel might illustrate a latent ambivalence within the series between the artist’s professed religious intent and the works’ sensuous allure of luminosity under the rule of the commodity. Regardless of Goeritz’s intention to create a new religious art, the Messages were sought after for their non-objective and modern solutions as well as for the uniqueness of their materials.              

Mathias Goeritz (Danzig, 1915; Mexico City, 1990) was a German-born Mexican painter and sculptor. Goeritz studied art history and philosophy at Friedrich Wilhelm Universität (now the Humboldt University of Berlin) and earned his doctorate in art history in 1940.  While at Friedrich Wilhelm Universität, Goeritz was also training to be an artist at Kunstgewerbe und Handwerkerschule, an applied arts and trade school, where he studied with well-known German artists Hans Orlowski and Max Kaus. Shortly after completing his studies, Goeritz fled World War II and Germany to Morroco in 1941. A year later, he married photographer Marianne Gast and the couple moved to Mexico in 1949.  His early works were exhibited under the pseudonym "Ma-Gó" and were first shown in a solo show at Librería-Galería Clan in Madrid. Goeritz was later offered a teaching job at Escuela de Arquitectura in Guadalajara. He accepted and had great success showing his work in Mexico. He is noted to have had a profound influence on younger Mexican artists like Pedro Friedeberg and Helen Escobedo. His work has been shown in galleries and museums all over the world, such as: Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City (2017); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2016); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2015); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007); among others. His pieces are also in the collections of institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; the Jewish Museum, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh and the Tate Collection, London. The artist passed away on August 4th, 1990 in Mexico City.