Art: Man of Stone

One of the striking sights in Mexico City is the new Communications and Public Works building, not so much because of its great glass and steel bulk as because of a series of brilliant mosaics which run like a bright tapestry over vast expanses of the exterior walls. On the building’s north façade the mosaics soar to a ten-story climax where a great mural in reds, yellows and greens covers 4,800 sq. ft. In the center is a figure symbolizing La Patria, a woman dressed in Indian costume; above her is a Mexican eagle flanked by representations of Revolutionist Emiliano Zapata and Aztec Emperor

Cuauhtemoc; below are a plumed serpent (the god Quetzalcoatl) and various Indian types. Other walls are crowded with Mexican heroes, symbols of Indian deities and illustrations of Communications Ministry activities—railroad locomotives, bridges, telegraph lines.

The Edifice Complex. The startling ten-story mosaic pattern is the latest work of Architect-Muralist Juan O’Gorman, a shy, hard-working artist of 49, who likes to keep trying for new ideas in expression.

The son of an Irish mining engineer and a Mexican-Irish mother, O’Gorman was struck as a youth by the extraordinary artistic renaissance which produced the great murals of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros. He came out of architecture school in 1927 temporarily endowed, like his contemporaries, with an edifice complex, functional phase. Hired by the Mexican government in 1932 to build schools in the capital, the young designer created box after concrete box, and in three years he studded the city with enough small schools to provide classrooms for 40,000 students. But finally O’Gorman got fed up with the chaste severity that characterizes functionalism. “Truly functional architecture,” he explained, “is cheaper [but] it’s an engineering proposition.” The style, he decided, had become a fetish instead of a means of saving money.

O’Gorman graduated to Frank Lloyd Wright’s “organic” architecture. He became a crusader for regional design, scorning European influences, concentrating on Mexican materials and forms that fitted Mexican tradition and environment. But in those days such ideas were against the temper of the times, and commissions were hard to get. So O’Gorman turned to painting, and developed in two directions at once: some of his canvases were meticulously realistic, others violently expressionistic. He enjoys his imaginative painting. But his conscience makes him prefer his realistic style because “it is easier to look at and live with. In general, good as modern painting can be, you get tired of it after a while. Art is like making love or eating. It is a pleasure, not something you have to learn.”

The Geologic Search. Through the years, O’Gorman puzzled over a way to make outdoor murals, finally hit upon the idea of using naturally colored stones. He became an amateur geologist, traveled hundreds of miles—sometimes on donkey-back—searching for stones that would keep their hues through decades of punishing sun and rain. After several years, he had collected 160 samples of volcanic and sedimentary rock, and from these he chose 15 for their color and availability. When Architect Carlos Lazo lured O’Gorman back into architecture to help design a library for the University of Mexico (TIME, Feb. 23, 1953), O’Gorman seized the chance to try his scheme for murals by facing the walls of the library tower with his first big stone mosaic. As a result, he was commissioned by Lazo (now the Communications Minister) to do murals for the Communications building.

Since it was obviously impractical to put up his huge mosaics stone by stone, O’Gorman devised his own method. First, he sketches out his designs in a workshop, then colors sections of the design and pastes them on small building models to see how they will look. Then he draws sections of his mural in actual scale on brown paper, designating color by letter symbol, and finally divides the sheets into one-meter squares.

The Last Plaque. In another workroom, girls spread the sheets on tables, each square in its own wooden frame, then lay out the variously colored stones in the designated spaces. Masons cover the stones with cement. Some 6,000 such squares, each weighing 170 lbs., were constructed, numbered, raised to the building walls to complete the Communications building design. For O’Gorman, it was a tough morning-to-night grind; in addition to the drawing and painting, he supervised the stone-laying and cementing, climbed about the building to see that the plaques were correctly placed. “I invented this technique,” O’Gorman explains. “I had to, because I didn’t know any other way to do it.” Last week O’Gorman supervised the placement of the final plaque and officially turned his mural over to the government.

How long would it stand against the weather? A geologist friend warned that some of the specimen rocks were too soft —they might not last more than 500 years. “Fine,” replied Juan O’Gorman. “That’s long enough for me.”