Presentation

THE INTIMATE NATURE OF LIFE

Ernst Saemisch (1902-1984)

Born in Germany and raised in the Black Forest mountains, Saemisch soon observes the living expressions of nature and the expressive potential of its forests. As a child in his father’s house, he establishes friendships with great scientists such as Fritz Haber, Walther Nernst, Werner Heisenberg, and Albert Einstein—with whom he shares the pleasures of skiing. This early encounter with scientific thought had a profound impact on his life.

A witness to two world wars, Saemisch works as a journalist throughout the turbulent years of Nazism and endures the material and moral devastation of the postwar years. During the rise of a German aesthetic representing Hitler’s National Socialism, Saemisch opposes patriotic exaltation and supremacist propaganda by deeply observing human nature and the essential forms of nature. This path leads him from figuration to abstraction. Understanding the deceit of any dogma, and guided by a profound libertarian spirit, he embraces uncertainty as a creative principle. He states: “Each day, painting is like jumping into the abyss.”

Much like his contemporaries observing the physical behavior of particles as both energy and matter, Saemisch wants to reveal “the intimate nature of life,” taking the knowledge and expression of its primeval forms as his point of departure. He captures that process by incorporating Eastern painting techniques into his practice, privileging direct, clean, and concentrated marks of the inked brush upon paper.

In 1963, he marries Gertrudis Zenzes, a Mexican student of German Literature, and migrates with her to Mexico, where he is profoundly influenced by the immense cultural wealth of the land, particularly its pre-Columbian heritage. While European avant-gardes had been fundamental to the development of his artistic practice, his move to the then-small village of Valle de Bravo in the mountains of the Estado de México brings its light, color, nature, and cultural expressions of its peoples to the forefront of his aesthetic exploration.

Returning to the forest and the mountain—this time in Mexico, not in Germany—Saemisch discovers Mexican artists: “I feel the emanation of Mexico’s influence upon me: my admiration and inclination for Orozco and Tamayo.”

With this exhibition, the work of the German artist will be showcased in the cradle of the Mexican Muralist Movement, fostering a new dialogue not only with the work of his beloved José Clemente but also with the art of the other founders of Muralism and the Mexican School of Painting. Curated by Eugenio Caballero—the production designer of films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Roma, and Bardo, among others—the exhibition is structured around the life of the artist and the meaningful moments of his career. It reveals the relationship between the intense and complex historical context in which he developed his work and the creative paths he used to respond to his circumstances. The exhibition design, created by Canek Saemisch—who is also a production designer and the artist’s son—is intended to highlight this narrative.

“Saemisch wants to celebrate. That is his true choice, to always affirm life, over and over again. To affirm it before the will to death propagated by the forces of destruction,” writes essayist Jorge Juanes. The Colegio de San Ildefonso hopes this exhibition allows us to discern the extent to which this celebration is a lot more than a change in the direction of the gaze—from the city to nature, from figuration to abstraction, from noise to silence. In the end, it is a poetic way of thinking and meditating, one able to open paths for the liberation of human beings in the face of the captivity imposed by the tragic labyrinths of history.

EDUARDO VÁZQUEZ MARTÍN

Executive Coordinator of the Colegio de San Ildefonso