Priscila Lena Farias / Anna Calvera Marcos da Costa ... - Blucher

Best Maugard, Elena Izcue and Theodoro Braga: Design education in Latin
America at the early twentieth century
BARBOSA, Ana Mae / PhD / University of Sao Paulo / University Anhembi Morumbi / Brazil
Latin Americ / Nationalism / Interculturality / Design education
Maugard, Izcue and Braga had European education but they had
nationalistic ideas for design teaching in their countries. The Escuelas
al aire libre (Mexico) followed Maugard who associated
free expression and exercises with a Mexican visual alphabet
systematized by him. Izcue, successful designer of the Maison
Worth, Paris, returning to Peru devoting herself to design teaching
based on indian patterns. Braga in Brazil worked toward stylizations
of Brazilian flora and fauna.
1. Best Maugard (1891-1964; 73 years)
The Escuelas al Aire Libre in Mexico (1913 and 1923 till 1932)
deliberately and programmatically integrated the idea of art and
design as free expression and as culture.
One of the findings of the present research is that most of the
well known approaches to the teaching of Modernist Art and
Design between 1910 and 1930 associated freedom of expression
to some kind of systematized knowledge, although Adolf
Best Maugard, the author of the textbook Manuales y Tratados:
Metodo de Dibujo - México - Departamento Edictorial de la Secretaria
de Educación, 1923 had associated freedom of expression
to the analysis of visual culture. His method had been used right
away at the Escuelas al Aire Libre, even before having been published.
Besides presenting beautiful drawings and paintings by
children and adolescents, the book suggests a series of exercises
to be performed starting from a systematization of the prevailing
forms and lines in Mexican visual culture, which he had carried
through for almost 20 years of research. He established a kind
of formal alphabet of Mexican art and Design composed of 7 patterns,
which he advised to use with children, adolescents and
adults, stimulating free combinations among them. In his book,
there are examples of the use of pattern 6 combined with pattern
2, 3, 4, etc. and even of a single pattern combined with itself.
The first Escuela al Aire Libre founded in 1913 and directed by
Alfredo Ramos Martinez was a dissenting branch from the Academia
de Bellas Artes. In 1911 students from that academy went
on strike claiming that instruction should be modernized and that
director Rivas Mercado should resign. He was coincidentally the
father of one of the most fervent defenders of Modern Art, Antonieta
Mercado, a political activist, lover to José Vasconcelos who
increased the number of Escuelas al Aire Libre when he was in
power. She lived with him in exile in Paris, where, after falling into
profound depression, as it is said, she committed suicide on the
premises of Notre Dame de Paris.
The students of the Academy of Fine Arts remained on strike for
more than two years and, finally, together with several professors,
founded Santa Anita School.
This school was still widely shaped according to European artistic
trends such as impressionism and was denominated the Barbizon
School as an allusion to the art produced by the Fontainebleau
landscape group during the second half of the XIX century,
as for instance Millet, Corot, Rousseau, Troyon, etc.
In 1919, the philosopher José Vasconcelos became president of
the University of Mexico and stimulated the Arts, publications of
translations of the founding books of western culture, thus leading
to the revaluation of Indian culture and interracial crossing.
He was a man of multicultural perspective, and advocated an
educational system directed towards cultural hybridism, toward
syncretism, stimulating the interrelation between the learned
and the popular, and between the prevailing international knowledge
and the local cultural values. Among 50 books written by
him, Ulysses Creole (1935), La Raza Cosmic (1925), Indologia
(1926), De Robinson a Odiseo (1952) are the ones that most intensely
display a defense of ethnical minorities and racial equity.
After the intervention of Vasconcelos the Escuelas al aire libre became
more connected with the education of the people not with
education of artists .
The patterns established by Best Maugard had been based on a
reading and analysis of Mexican culture and its objects from the
formal and aesthetic point of view but with social and political
objectives.
Figure 1. Elements or design standards established by Best Mexican.
Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies / Proceedings of the 8th Conference of the International Committee for
Design History & Design Studies - ICDHS 2012 / São Paulo, Brazil / © 2012 Blucher / ISBN 978-85-212-0692-7