<< Back

ART & ARCHITECTURE DERIVES

The Madman Pallares: A Futurist in Mexico

Elisa Drago Quaglia

The drama of modernity at the beginning of the 20th century was a breeding ground for ideas and new visions for a world in constant transformation. The machine age and the emergence of modern cities continue to fascinate us even today, a hundred years later, due to the rich creative process in which the planet was immersed. For humanity to face a promising future, a new aesthetic, emotional, cultural, artistic, and architectural consciousness had to be invented. In this context of a new total art, the figure of Alfonso Pallares emerged, a figure who was, perhaps, too modern even for moderns. With a kinesthetic understanding of the world, dislocated from his time and parallel to the violence of Italian Futurism, Pallares sought to give form to his concerns and attempted to express them in our country, in a culturally and architecturally rooted society rooted in conservative nineteenth-century values. Unable to understand him, they called him mad.

>>

Elisa Drago Quaglia
She holds a Master’s and Doctorate in Architecture from UNAM. She is a researcher at TC CIAUP/FA-UNAM and coordinator of the AAM/FA-UNAM Mexican Architecture Collection since 2023.
She teaches in the Architecture degree program and in the Light Roofing Specialization program at FA-UNAM. Her line of research focuses on the historiographical review of architecture and urban planning in 20th-century Mexico, based on primary documentary sources.
She is the author of more than forty book chapters and articles, and the book Alfonso Pallares, Sower of Ideas (2016). She is also the coordinator of the books: Leer a Alberto T. Arai, reflexiones ensayos y textos (2019), Carlos González Lobo: arquitectura apropiada y social (with Alejandra Contreras, 2024), and Arquitectura y suburbios: en busca de la periferia (with Alejandro Leal, 2024).
She is member ofDOCOMOMO Mexico and member of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS). Level 1 of the SNI-SECIHTI.

www.acervodearquitecturamexicana.com

Arte Abierto continues with its new public program Derivas de Arte y Arquitectura (Art & Architecture Derives), which seeks to renew our gaze on the architectural legacy of Mexico City. From a series of talks focused on rescuing the parallel stories of emblematic architectural projects and public spaces that have witnessed the variable intersection between art and architecture. In this first stage, the program deals mainly with modern architecture, based on a series of talks given by invited curators, architects, artists and urban planners.

With this program, ways of returning to architecture part of its public, experiential, collective character and close to those of us who inhabit the city are tested, recognizing in it its condition as a living archive. From these talks, circumstances, contexts and anecdotes are revealed that have been part of his sensitive memory and that complement his material memory, a relationship that often escapes documentary narratives and academic accounts.

The objective of the Derives is to generate experiences of spatial rediscovery, which allow us to renew our gaze on the legacy of certain emblematic architectural and artistic works, as well as those that have been forgotten.

The derives will be carried out free of charge on the last Saturday of each month, at 1:00 p.m. with a limited capacity.

Arte Abierto Derives :

February 26: Tania Ragasol / Entorno urbano, cotidianidad y arte: La Torre de los Vientos by Gonzalo Fonseca

March 26 : David Miranda / Del Animal Herido y otros eventos escultóricos dentro de la arquitectura moderna

April 23: Gustavo Lipkau y Xavier Hierro / Integración plástica de los edificios del campus central de CU: sus murales

May 28: Marisol Argüelles / La casa-estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. Del espacio doméstico a la dimensión de lo público

June 25: Luis Javier de la Torre/ La Ruta de la Amistad MÉXICO68… más allá de 1968

July 30: Aldo Solano/ Architecture for playing in 20th Century Mexico City.

August 27: Christian del Castillo/ Tracing the modern in the architecture of the Historic Center of Mexico City.

September 24: Juan José Kochen/ The Ideal of the Multifamily Apartment cComplex.

October 29: Tania Candiani/ Quantum Prelude. Sound activation by Tania Candiani.

March 25: Ana Garduño/ Cultural Geographies: The invention of museum circuits in 20th century Mexico City.

May 27: Rebeca Barquera/ The Plastic Integration Movement México: More than murals on buildings.

June 17: Julián Arroyo Cetto/ Max Cetto in the beginning of El Pedregal.

July 29: Peter Kriegel/ The eco-aesthetics of El Pedregal and constructive botany in the megacity of Mexico.

August 26: Arturo Rivera García y Roberto Bustamante Castrejón/ Jardines del Pedregal Legacy: Memory and Identity.

September 30: Tonatiuh Martínez/ The garden as an extension of nature.

October 21: Lorena Botello/ Clara Porset’s Design: Between Tradition and Modernity.

March 23: Alejandro Ochoa Vega y Francisco Haroldo Alfaro Salazar/ Cinemas in Mexico in the 20th Century: Distant Spaces in Memory.

April 20: Rodrigo Torres Ramos / Pictorial Functionalism: The proposal for plastic integration of Mario Pani and Carlos Mérida.

June 22: María Bustamante Harfush / Public work and collective housing by Abraham Zabludovsky.

July 27: Veka Duncan / El Art Déco en México. La nacionalización de la modernidad.

August 31: Balam Bartolomé / Visiones del Altépetl caído: Un relato de Tlatelolco desde el arte.

October 19: José Ignacio Lanzagorta / The sixties and the christening of the Zona Rosa.

November 23: Eder Castillo & Arturo Ortiz Struck / GuggenSITO beyond the unfolding cube. Public art and interactivity.

March 29: Ximena Apisdorf / Architecture and museum: The transformation of the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo

April 26: Lorena Botello / A Museum Designed for a Modern Art Collection

May 31: Carlos Rodríguez / Nonoalco in the Cinema, Shadow of Modernity

June 21: Erik Carranza / The cells that no longer explode: in search of an absent bust (that of JFK) and its relationship with GoSk8Day (June 21) in the Jardín Balbuena neighborhood

July 26: Rocío Martínez Barrera / Vladimir Kaspé: Architecture as a whole

August 23: Elisa Drago Quaglia / The Madman Pallares: A Futurist in Mexico