1887 -1918 · Mexican modernism and national identity

Workers, popular traditions and Mexican myths take on a monumental dignity in Saturnino Herran carried by color, symbolism and a deep humanity.

Saturnino Herran Guinchard was born in Aguascalientes in 1887 and died in Mexico in 1918, at only thirty-one years old. Installed in the capital from 1903, he entered the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, heiress to the Academy of San Carlos. He studied with Antonio Fabrés, Leandro Izaguirre and Germân Gedovius, who transmitted to him academic drawing, painting of materials and symbolism. Herran assimilates these international influences without renouncing Mexican realities. He paints sellers, artisans, workers, old men, women in shawls, brotherhoods and popular types with a dignity that avoids the easy picturesque. El cofrade de San Miguel unites religious fervor, costume and presence psychological. El Gallero paints a portrait of character from an ordinary profession. The Offer transforms the gesture of giving into a ritual scene, while The Legend of the Volcanoes connects body, myth and national landscape. Member of the Ateneo de la Juventud, Herran participates in debates on a modern Mexican culture, syncretic and conscious of its indigenous and Hispanic roots. He also works as an illustrator of books and magazines and designs vast decorative projects, including the unfinished triptych Nuestros dioses. His brief career precedes muralism, but his monumentality, his attention to the people and his search for a national visual identity announce several concerns of the next generation. The "Saturnino Herran" selection notably compares El cofrade de San Miguel and El Gallero. Its reading favors atmosphere.

Herran makes monumental what society barely looks at: a profession, an offering or a popular face becomes a bearer of national memory.