Carlos Mérida sends this letter to the magazine Ars to protest the article by Samuel Ramos entitled “Twenty years of painting in Mexico,” published in the first issue of said periodical. The artist expresses his disagreement, pointing out the philosopher’s lack of knowledge about pictorial matters and affirms that Mexican writers were never interested in studying a topic that refers not only to painters, but also to the culture of the country in general. In his opinion, they write because of vanity or because it is a literary sport that agrees with their very personal inclinations, or because of friendly connections. In addition, Mérida offers some arguments against the explanations proposed by the philosopher.

This article is Carlos Mérida’s (1891-1990) response to the text by the philosopher Samuel Ramos (1897-1959) about painting in México, published in the same magazine. Ramos strongly criticizes all those painters who split from the Mexican pictorial movement that originated in 1921, whom Ramos considers imitators of foreign models and followers of commercial patterns. The philosopher considers the others to be mere imitators of the patriarch Diego Rivera. Indeed, Mérida’s response deals with Ramos’ lack of knowledge of the topic. The latter returns to ideas already developed since 1920, concerning the harmful effects on art of the criticism introduced by writers as well as (in this case) philosophers. In this regard: (see doc. 746936 about Samuel Ramos and about Mérida’s text about writers and art critics, doc. 733457).  Carlos Mérida (1891-1990), the Guatemalan painter who had settled in Mexico City, shows us through his writings an overview of over six decades of artistic activity in his adoptive country. His vision—highly critical and seductive at the same time—reflects the thought of a personality who not only shares in space and time, the different developments of artistic activity, but whose ideas also contribute new readings and analytical aspects that differ from those that marked his time. In addition to the development of visual arts in Mexico, Mérida wrote, among other topics, about subjects such as caricature, photography, dance, cinema, design, and popular art—in Mexico as well as Guatemala—and provided insightful reflections about composition in the visual arts, including both the sense and function of art.