Miscellany
9476 Palacio de Bellas Artes
Las obras y los días 1934-2014
Xavier Guzmán Urbiola, Alejandro Rosas, Giorgio Antei. Introduction by Enrique Peña Nieto, Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, María Cristina García Cepeda
2014 / 264 PAGES.
Language: Spanish; English
The Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City has a complex history, retraced in this volume, which delves into its construction process and illustrates the fascination of the monument’s unique syncretism of styles.
The construction of Mexico’s new National Theatre was assigned to the Italian Adamo Boari, commissioned by the government of Porfirio Díaz. The architect, already well-known in the country’s capital for the design of the Post Office Building, combines neoclassical elements with inspirations from indigenous art in the new project. Work, which began in 1904, proceeded slowly and was partially interrupted by the Mexican Revolution. Boari left the country with the work unfinished, although he continued to take an interest in the project, and the commission passed to the Mexican architect Federico Mariscal, who completed the project thirty years after it began. The original project underwent numerous changes in terms of function and style, becoming the Palace of Fine Arts: a space dedicated to culture, an expression of Mexican and European art. The illustration of the working process is accompanied in the volume by historical documents of the main authors of the project.