Showing its affinity with the ideas of Estridentismo, the magazine Ser reproduces on its cover an ideographic portrait that captures the psychological image of Manuel Maples Arce, a “champlave” [sic] of Jean Charlot, which through its fragmented facial elements, isolated letters, and off lines turns into a cubic-futuristic resolution, almost a caricature, and must have scandalized the cultural milieu.

Conservative enclaves such as the city of Puebla counted among its members such avant-garde artists as Germán List Arzubide, who contributed to turning Ser, from “an illustrated cultural magazine” into the Revista internacional de vanguardia [International Avant-garde Magazine].Estridentismo was an early Mexican avant-garde movement that originated in 1921, parallel to the muralist movement. Its creator and for some time only member was Manuel Maples Arce (1898-1981), a poet from Veracruz who rebelled against modernist poets and academic painting. Related to Dadaism, Futurism, Ultraism, and Creationism—in both its European and Latin American manifestations— Estridentismo was a movement centered on agitprop strategies, and unrestricted allegiance to a mechanical aesthetics. The followers of the movement encouraged a new urban sensory perception, in which experiences accumulate in simultaneity, at the rhythm and speed of modern life. The very name of the movement refers to urban noise as well as to their whish to be heard because of their embedded transgressions and excesses.As a movement by artists devoted to literature, music, painting, engraving, photography, and sculpture, Estridentismo had its center of operations at El Café de Nadie in Mexico City. Later on, it relocated to the city of Xalapa (Veracruz) where its members became involved in the educational revolution. It also relied on several information disseminating sources, such as the magazines: Ser, Irradiador, and Horizonte.