Mexico City. Ernesto Mallard, the most important exponent of kinetic art in Mexico, died this Friday night at the age of 90, at his home in Mexico City, reported his daughter Lia Mallard.
The death was “of an elderly person. He was thin, tired. It was old. He was two months away from his 91st birthday. We met his close family and said goodbye to him, ”he added in an interview.
In an interview with his son Alain-Paul Mallard for the Spanish digital magazine Context, the painter and sculptor argued that “art itself can and should approach the public, stimulate it and help it feel, help it think, help it live. A ‘public aesthetic consciousness’ exists when, nurtured, stimulated, sensitized, people feel capable of engaging in a dialogue –critical, fruitful– with the work of art ”.
The painter and sculptor Ernesto Mallard told James Oles, about the exhibition Connect the dots: “Since 1966, the iron, plastics and fibers were already working to make fabrics. At first everything was going for models, both for my homework for school, and for visual proposals. From there I began to think about the great possibilities that the straight line had as such: the vertical line, the horizontal line and all their inclinations, not only in the plane, but in space.
“A simple superposition of lines has a great capacity to provoke something visually. It’s very emotional, at least for me. At that time he told me: ‘If I see it and feel it, others should also be able to feel it and value it.’ And this from the energy that the movement of the spectator himself projects. “
As an artist, Lia Mallard recounted, “she did everything that came to her mind. He used all the materials with which it can be created. His house is full of pigeons hanging from the ceiling. He was always very creative, because he made the same doves of wire and sheet, as ants.
“He collected stones on the street and in the places he visited. He made his sculptures. On another occasion he made one of eggs: Mallard’s eggs. He was very ingenious. “
Her daughter reported that she had another exposure that they called The Pachamama, in which he used many things with reference to crops, to the land, to caring for the environment. Had a time of Naturacosas, which is kinetic art. He also did painting ”.
Ernesto Mallard told James Oles that the poet Carlos Pellicer was the one who named his series Naturacosas. “He did not propose a precise definition: he spoke of the nature of things, of things –creations– that the hand of man adds to nature. Later he would put the word in some of his poems ”.
Pionero del op art
The kinetic artist and sculptor was born in 1932, in Cosamaloapan, Veracruz. He studied architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and took workshops in La Esmeralda and San Carlos, in Mexico City.
In the 60s of the last century he devoted himself to art. Presented work at the exhibition Kineticism, made by Helen Escobedo at the University Museum of Sciences and Arts in Ciudad Universitaria.
There he exhibited “some mobiles that people manipulated when they entered. There is a slide of children and people who came in to move geometric shapes made with plastic tape. By twisting them, different crosses were generated: triangular, hexagonal, etc. ”.
Mallard was a pioneer in the development of op-art in Mexico and in research related to kineticism, conceived in the 1950s and whose principle was the real representation of the movement.
Towards the middle of the decade of the 70s, the artist made a symbolic closure of galleries, since “they did business only for themselves and nothing else”, with which he distanced himself for 40 years from the art market.
Ernesto Mallard also told James Oles that Manuel Felguérez and Sebastián, among others, participated in this protest. “After a while everyone who had joined the boycott realized that they could not survive without the system, but I decided to stay out. I retired from the commercial galleries, although I continued to participate in meetings within the sphere of official culture ”.
He also devoted himself to architecture. “I designed a bridge in Coatzacoalcos and built railway stations both in Guadalajara and elsewhere in Jalisco,” he said about that period.
In 2014 the exhibition Connect the dots, a tribute to the production of Ernesto Mallard between 1968 and 1974, at the LABOR gallery. “Forty years later we see these creations again that undoubtedly confirm Mallard as the most outstanding exponent of kinetic art in Mexico,” said Pedro Reyes at the time.
In his career there are dozens of individual exhibitions in Mexico and abroad, in which those housed in the Diego Rivera Modern Art and Mural museums, as well as in the Palacio de Minería of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, stand out.
He made sculptures, murals and installations in public spaces such as the Mexico City Metro. And he participated in some 90 group exhibitions in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.
On its Facebook site, the Casa del Risco Museum deeply regretted the death of maestro Ernesto Mallard (1932-2021). His work helped redefine the future of contemporary sculpture. Our condolences to the family and friends of the teacher, who left an important mark on the country and on our museum, which has always covered his art ”.
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