Adolfo Best Maugard

Biography

In 1913 Diego Rivera painted in oils a portrait of a young Mexican whom he had met in Europe. Today the canvas is in the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City. It shows Adolfo Best Maugard, whom his friends called Fito Best.

He was born on 11 June 1891 in Mexico City. In his youth, before leaving to study, he made detailed drawings of prehispanic finds from excavations in the Valley of Mexico for the American anthropologist Franz Boas; by some accounts these were more than two thousand ceramic objects selected by Boas. He worked as an assistant to the archaeologist Manuel Gamio, who introduced him to Boas, then a professor at Columbia University. Best Maugard completed his art studies in Europe, where he met Rivera.

In 1914 he returned to Mexico and taught at the first open-air painting schools. He turned to Mexican folk art and combined it with modern, rationally constructed forms; figures in the manner of caricature often appear in his paintings. In mid-1919 he went to continue his studies in the United States, and in 1920 he came back.

From 1921 to 1924 he headed the department of art education at the Secretariat of Public Education, then led by José Vasconcelos. His drawing method entered teaching in Mexican schools in 1922. His book “Manuales y Tratados: Método de dibujo: tradición, resurgimiento y evolución del arte mexicano” (“Drawing Method: Tradition, Resurgence, and Evolution of Mexican Art”, 1923) is generally said to have influenced more than 200,000 pupils. The method rests on seven basic elements which, according to Best Maugard, are found in the primitive art of all peoples: the spiral, the zigzag, the straight line and others. Each people transforms them in its own way, depending on its environment and society. He was interested only in form and set symbolic content aside. It seems to me an attempt to find a common language for Mexican art rather than a recipe for “Mexicanness”, although he himself saw it as both. In these years he also wrote several books on art history. In 1926 the English version of the manual, “A Method for Creative Design”, was published in New York by Alfred Knopf. The American painter Walter Inglis Anderson studied it in the early 1940s.

In 1931 the Mexican government commissioned him to assist Sergei Eisenstein on the film ¡Que viva México! The following year he joined the Council of Fine Arts and the Council of Cultural Affairs in Mexico City, and became a member of the Society of Geography and Statistics and of the Mexican Union of Film Directors. In 1933 he represented the department of fine arts on the council for primary education. From 1932 to 1935 he worked in the marketing department of the National Lottery.

In 1933 he directed the film “Humanidad” (“Humanity”). In 1937 he made “La mancha de sangre” (“The Bloodstain”) from his own script; it reached cinemas only in June 1943. He was a friend of Rosa and Miguel Covarrubias and kept up contacts with artistic and poetry circles in the United States.

Adolfo Best Maugard died on 25 August 1964 in Athens.