[A MANIFESTO OF INDIGENISMO] El movimiento artístico de México [The artistic movement in Mexico]

Quito, Ecuador: Elan, 1935. Octavo (19.7 × 14.7 cm). Original pictorial wrappers by Germania Paz y Miño; [112 pp] with 7 plates of color illustrations by Paz y Miño. Leaves evenly toned due to stock; binding lightly shaken; still about very good.

First edition of this treatise arguing for reconnecting art and culture with indigenous traditions, written by Mexican diplomat Salvador Aceves Navarro in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito. Spurred by the Mexican Revolution, Mexican art and culture underwent a transformation that had repercussions throughout Latin America. Aceves Navarro begins with a brief summary of Mexico's pre-Columbian and colonial arts to underscore the importance of cultural heritage. In his view, it is essential to reconnect with these traditions in order to develop a distinctly Latin American art. To this end, he proposes concrete cultural policy measures. First, national art schools must be established. These should break away from previous academic tendencies and instead observe the reality surrounding them. In conclusion, he addresses Ecuadorian readers specifically and calls on artists to regard indigenous culture as the foundation for the development of a true national art. (Michele Greet, Pintar la nación indígena como una estrategia modernista en la obra de Eduardo Kingman, in: Procesos: Revista ecuatoriana de historia, No. 25, 2007, pp. 93-119)

To illustrate the volume, Navarro Aceves recruited Ecuadorian sculptor, painter, and drawing artist Germania Paz y Miño de Brehil, who shortly thereafter published her own art-political treatise titled "El arte como factor social," in which she discussed the social dimension of art, drawing examples from Mexican and Soviet art. Mexican Foreign Minister Enríquez Raymundo contributed three essays to her work. While she illustrates the present text with drawings of pre-Columbian art, in her own text she uses photographs of indigenous Ecuadorians and Mexicans to underscore the shared cultural heritage and symbolic alliance between the two countries. (Ibid.) Paz y Miño de Brehil took drawing lessons from José María Roura Oxandaberro until 1934. Six years later, she received a scholarship to the New School for Social Research, where she studied mural painting under Camilo Egas and sculpture under José de Creeft and Seymour Lipton. But even during her studies, she stood out with her works, inspired by Mexican Realism and German Expressionism, and became a well-known representative of the neoclassically influenced style of Indigenismo. (AKL XCIV, p. 473)

Ilk, Global Avantgarde Typography 1915-1950, p. 113 (Ecuador 7).