Roberto Montenegro

Roberto Montenegro Nervo was born on February 19, 1885, in Guadalajara. His parents were Colonel Ignacio L Montenegro and María Nervo, aunt of poet Amado Nervo. Montenegro had four sisters: Rosaura, Ana, Eva and María Eugenia and one brother, Arturo. The family was one of the beneficiaries of the Porfirio Díaz regime, leaving for the United States when the Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910. They returned in the mid-1920s. Little is known of Montenegro's childhood. One photo exists of him as a teenager in a park with Jorge Enciso and Luis Castillo Ledón. In interviews he only talked about ordinary things from this time such as going to buy pastry and admiring the colors and forms of ordinary things around him. He arrived to Mexico City in 1903, sent by his father to study architecture. Through his cousin Amado Nervo, he was able to meet many of the social elite of Mexico City including José Juan Tablada, Manuel de la Parra and Justo Sierra. From 1904 to 1906 he studied drawing and history at the Academy of San Carlos. His teachers included Leandro Izaguirre, Germán Gedovius and Alberto Fuster and his classmates were Diego Rivera, Ángel Zárraga, Francisco Goitia and Saturnino Herrán. He became familiar with Japanese art whose influence can be seen some of his illustrations for Revista Moderna. In 1906, he and Diego Rivera were finalists for a chance to go to Europe. The decision was made by coin toss with Montenegro winning. But Rivera would go months later. From 1907 to 1910 he was in Paris where he had his first contact with Cubism, meeting Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris . Montenegro moved back to Mexico permanently in 1921. He kept a wide circle of friends that included writers, journalists, artists and politicians. He died in Pátzcuaro on October 13, 1968. ==Career==

Illustration and publishing During his lifetime, Montenegro had good relationships with various writers including José Juan Tablada and Luis G. Urbina working with Revista Moderna. In France he collaborated with Le Temoin and in Madrid with Ramón del Valle-Inclán. In Mexico, he associated with a number of writers for a publication called Los Contemporáneos from 1928 to 1931 which included Carlos Pellicer, José Gorostiza and Salvador Novo. The first publication he worked with was Revista Moderna de México, directed by Jesús E. Valenzuela. In 1917, his illustrations were in a children's version of Aladdin published in Barcelona. In 1933 he published Pintura mexicana (1800–1860) dedicated to the painters of Jalisco. In 1950, he published research on altarpieces called Retablos de México. In 1952 he published an album of twenty drawings with a prologue by Alfonso Reyes. Montenegro moved onto other projects but returned to doing some mural and building decoration work in the late career. In 1958, he painted a frieze called Apolo y las musas (Apollo and the muses) for the Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara; however, because of poor installation, it collapsed in 1963. Other important canvas pieces include Oaxaqueña y alfareros, La curandera, La mujer con el pescado, Celista, Vida y muerte and La familia. In 1934, he organized and was the first director of a folk art museum located in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, to which he donated a number of still life paintings. His promotion work included the discovery and promotion of 19th century folk painter José María Estrada, as well as exhibitions in Mexico and abroad. In 1940, he was the folk art curator for a very large exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York called Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art. Other work Montenegro also held a number of government posts. In 1921, he was in charge of the Departamento de Artes Plásticas, the director of the Departamenteo de Bellas Artes in 1934, and the director of the Departamento de Enseñanza Artística for the Secretaría de Educación Pública in 1936. In 1946, he organized the Regional Museum of Toluca. He became the head of the Departamento de Arte Popular of Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1947. However, after clashing with INBA director Carlos Chávez, he left government service. Other work included state sets and design. He did scenery work for the Teatro de Ulises and participating in the shooting of the film Qué viva México!, by Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein . In 1948, he decorated the cocktail lounge of the Hotel del Prado. ==Artistry==

Montenegro was a painter, a printmaker, illustrator and included some work in theater and decoration. His time in Europe gave him exposure to various influences from Symbolism, Art Nouveau and Cubism especially from Aubrey Beardsley, William Blake and Rubén Darío . However, much of is aesthetic is also drawn from Mexican handcrafts and folk art, such as traditional clothing from the south of Mexico and religious objects. During his career, he felt torn between the classics and the modern in painting and tended to oscillate between the two, which prompted a certain amount of criticism of his art. Montenegro claimed to be a "subrealist" rather than a Surrealist, and his paintings often mixed two fundaments elements, folklore and fantasy. In his later work Montenegro evolved an abstract style, although he never lost his interest in popular, pre-Hispanic and colonial art. ==Recognition==

In 1967, he received the Premio Nacional de las Artes . In the 2000s TV UNAM produced a documentary about his work called Los murales perdidos de Roberto Montenegro (The lost murals of Roberto Montenegro) . ==References==