Antonio Pineda Cachero Propaganda Contrapropaganda y Discurso Crítico
Antonio Pineda at MOIFA
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Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Aug 13, 2010; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8 STUNNING IN SILVER Folk art museum exhibit features Antonio Pineda’s extravagant, inventive jewelry Art Issues MALIN WILSONPOWELL For the Journal Our world-class Museum of International Folk Art has a traveling exhibition that showcases the fabulous silver work of the late Antonio Pineda (1919-2009). It is a large, beautifully installed survey featuring more than 200 pieces of Pineda’s bold and thoroughly inventive jewelry, hollowware and flatware. Pineda was a native of Taxco, the Spanish Colonial “Silver Capital of Mexico,” where today there are an estimated 2,000 silversmiths. From the evidence on view, Pineda was at the pinnacle of Mexican Modernist artists who rose to prominence in the 1930s, a period of groundbreaking technical innovation and design that is now deemed the “Silver Renaissance.” Today Taxco is a charming city of more than 50,000 situated in rugged terrain 45 miles southwest of Mexico City, a place of narrow, winding cobblestone streets and whitewashed buildings with red tile roofs. The MOIFA installation opens with an extraordinary necklace and matching bracelet inspired by the alternate convex/concave pattern of those traditional scoop-shaped roofing tiles. It is from the 1940s — a time for the artist, as he tells us in an informative video, when he finally found his distinctive design vocabulary. Coming into his own took Pineda many arduous years. The rooftile necklace is a hefty fan-shaped ripple of silver inlaid with amethyst, somehow at once utterly obvious yet very subtle. It is an eloquent and modern iteration of the everyday and indigenous. Pineda’s mature style is a melding of everyday materials like matchsticks, and natural elements like armadillo scales and birds’ feathers with a modernist machine aesthetic. Many of his chunky collars and cuffs look like precursors of today’s bristling, spiky heavy-metal style. That the designs appear so straightforward and clean belie their underlying finesse and sensitivity to the complexity of the human bodies they adorn. On close inspection they are refined architectural and engineering feats with flexible segments and perfectly placed, sometimes hidden hinges. It is said that a Pineda fits the body perfectly, that it feels right when it is worn. Even though there are glamorous models wearing them in fashion photos, there are no videos showing his masterpieces on bodies in motion. One imagines their balance of weight on the wearer’s body is similar to great contemporary performance and dance wear that supports great freedom of movement while at the same time hugging the performer’s body. Certainly, wearing a dramatic Pineda necklace requires great presence and is a performance. Preconquest silver mining in area mines was for ornament and tribute, but after Hernan Cortez conquered the Aztecs in 1521, the silver mines of Taxco would supply billions of ounces of New World bullion to the Spanish Empire. This massive extraction, and exploitation –– with 90 percent of the silver exported — became the currency that made the Old World’s commercial and then industrial revolutions possible. Following the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution and the 35-year stranglehold of Porfirio Diaz, when Mexico’s culture was dominated by European tastes, artists were enlisted to help unify a country divided into ethnic, linguistic and political factions. Artists and craftsmen turned to distinctly Mexican sources of inspiration like the Mayan codex, native plants and animals. It was the time of the great muralists — Rivera, Orozco and Siqueros, who was a close friend of the much younger Pineda. New Orleans architect William Spratling (1900-67) opened up a renowned workshop for handcrafted silver using pre-Columbian motifs in Taxco in 1930. His Taller de las Delicias (Workshop of Delights) ignited an explosion of creativity and was an incubator for many of Mexico’s most celebrated silversmiths, among them Pineda, Hector Aguilar, Valentin Vidaurreta, Antonio Castillo, Margot of Taxco, and Jean Puiforcat. In 1938 at the age of 19, after a twoyear apprenticeship with Spratling, Pineda opened his own taller with the promise that he would not copy any designs. In combination with his high standards of material and craftsmanship, Pineda became a master of using and setting gemstones, some oversize, with others matched and set closely together for major impact. No other taxqueno used as many costly semiprecious stones or set them with as much extravagance, ingenuity and skill. Some appear to be free-floating, others deeply embedded. He used them to emphasize the architecture of his pieces, and he also had stones specially cut into unusual shapes. Initially Pineda had access to precious and semiprecious stones after he was included in a San Francisco exhibition of three silver designers that included Georg Jensen and Margaret De Patta at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Because of World War II, an increasing number of foreign travelers frequented picturesque Taxco, which became a popular haunt for the Hollywood crowd. Befriending so many clients and visitors, Pineda’s reputation spread. While in San Francisco for his exhibition, Pineda met Richard Gump, the heir to the Gump’s prestigious department store, who bought all of Pineda’s 160 pieces in the show. In an interview Pineda recalled: “(Gump’s was) very famous for specializing in oriental art and stones. (When) I left San Francisco, Richard Gump and Mark Rosenblatt, the vice president of the company said, ‘Antonio, here is something for you to keep occupied.’ It was a large collection of gems, oriental gems, jades, obsidian, just (arrived) from China. Every design I made for a number of years was for Gump’s. They kept me busy.” Eventually Pineda’s workshop expanded to over 100 silversmiths. Pineda’s creativity flourished and his designs became more experimental and increasingly sophisticated. While Pineda’s seven decades of seemingly endless creativity is inspiring to all, in New Mexico, a place called home by so many skilled designers and artists, this exhibition is not only seductive but a potential generator of not yet imagined material consequences. If you go WHAT: “Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda” WHERE: Museum of International Folk Art, on Museum Hill, 706 Camino Lejo, off the Old Santa Fe Trail WHEN: Through Jan. 2, 2011 HOURS: Daily 10 a.m.-5 p.m. through Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 6. From Sept. 13, Tuesday through Sunday; closed on Mondays. COST: $6 New Mexico residents; $9 nonresidents. New Mexico residents with ID free Sunday. Students with ID $1 discount. New Mexico resident seniors (60+) with ID free Wednesdays. Free 5-8 p.m. Fridays. CONTACT: 505-476-1200 or www.moifa. org STUNNING IN SILVER http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol... 1 of 3 4/27/11 12:43 PM
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Review of Antonio Pineda "Silver Seduction" traveling exhibition at the Museum of International Folk Art
Transcript of Antonio Pineda at MOIFA
Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Aug 13, 2010; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8
STUNNING IN SILVER Folk art museum exhibit features Antonio Pineda’s extravagant, inventive jewelry Art Issues
MALIN WILSONPOWELL
For the Journal
Our world-class Museum of International Folk Art has a traveling exhibition that showcases the fabulous silver work of the late Antonio Pineda (1919-2009). It is a large,beautifully installed survey featuring more than 200 pieces of Pineda’s bold and thoroughly inventive jewelry, hollowware and flatware. Pineda was a native of Taxco, theSpanish Colonial “Silver Capital of Mexico,” where today there are an estimated 2,000 silversmiths. From the evidence on view, Pineda was at the pinnacle of MexicanModernist artists who rose to prominence in the 1930s, a period of groundbreaking technical innovation and design that is now deemed the “Silver Renaissance.”
Today Taxco is a charming city of more than 50,000 situated in rugged terrain 45 miles southwest of Mexico City, a place of narrow, winding cobblestone streets andwhitewashed buildings with red tile roofs. The MOIFA installation opens with an extraordinary necklace and matching bracelet inspired by the alternate convex/concavepattern of those traditional scoop-shaped roofing tiles. It is from the 1940s — a time for the artist, as he tells us in an informative video, when he finally found hisdistinctive design vocabulary. Coming into his own took Pineda many arduous years. The rooftile necklace is a hefty fan-shaped ripple of silver inlaid with amethyst,somehow at once utterly obvious yet very subtle. It is an eloquent and modern iteration of the everyday and indigenous. Pineda’s mature style is a melding of everydaymaterials like matchsticks, and natural elements like armadillo scales and birds’ feathers with a modernist machine aesthetic. Many of his chunky collars and cuffs looklike precursors of today’s bristling, spiky heavy-metal style. That the designs appear so straightforward and clean belie their underlying finesse and sensitivity to thecomplexity of the human bodies they adorn. On close inspection they are refined architectural and engineering feats with flexible segments and perfectly placed,sometimes hidden hinges. It is said that a Pineda fits the body perfectly, that it feels right when it is worn. Even though there are glamorous models wearing them infashion photos, there are no videos showing his masterpieces on bodies in motion. One imagines their balance of weight on the wearer’s body is similar to greatcontemporary performance and dance wear that supports great freedom of movement while at the same time hugging the performer’s body. Certainly, wearing adramatic Pineda necklace requires great presence and is a performance.
Preconquest silver mining in area mines was for ornament and tribute, but after Hernan Cortez conquered the Aztecs in 1521, the silver mines of Taxco would supplybillions of ounces of New World bullion to the Spanish Empire. This massive extraction, and exploitation –– with 90 percent of the silver exported — became the currencythat made the Old World’s commercial and then industrial revolutions possible.
Following the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution and the 35-year stranglehold of Porfirio Diaz, when Mexico’s culture was dominated by European tastes, artists were enlistedto help unify a country divided into ethnic, linguistic and political factions. Artists and craftsmen turned to distinctly Mexican sources of inspiration like the Mayan codex,native plants and animals. It was the time of the great muralists — Rivera, Orozco and Siqueros, who was a close friend of the much younger Pineda.
New Orleans architect William Spratling (1900-67) opened up a renowned workshop for handcrafted silver using pre-Columbian motifs in Taxco in 1930. His Taller de lasDelicias (Workshop of Delights) ignited an explosion of creativity and was an incubator for many of Mexico’s most celebrated silversmiths, among them Pineda, HectorAguilar, Valentin Vidaurreta, Antonio Castillo, Margot of Taxco, and Jean Puiforcat. In 1938 at the age of 19, after a twoyear apprenticeship with Spratling, Pineda openedhis own taller with the promise that he would not copy any designs.
In combination with his high standards of material and craftsmanship, Pineda became a master of using and setting gemstones, some oversize, with others matchedand set closely together for major impact. No other taxqueno used as many costly semiprecious stones or set them with as much extravagance, ingenuity and skill.Some appear to be free-floating, others deeply embedded. He used them to emphasize the architecture of his pieces, and he also had stones specially cut into unusualshapes.
Initially Pineda had access to precious and semiprecious stones after he was included in a San Francisco exhibition of three silver designers that included Georg Jensenand Margaret De Patta at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Because of World War II, an increasing number of foreign travelers frequented picturesque Taxco, whichbecame a popular haunt for the Hollywood crowd. Befriending so many clients and visitors, Pineda’s reputation spread. While in San Francisco for his exhibition, Pinedamet Richard Gump, the heir to the Gump’s prestigious department store, who bought all of Pineda’s 160 pieces in the show. In an interview Pineda recalled: “(Gump’swas) very famous for specializing in oriental art and stones. (When) I left San Francisco, Richard Gump and Mark Rosenblatt, the vice president of the company said,‘Antonio, here is something for you to keep occupied.’ It was a large collection of gems, oriental gems, jades, obsidian, just (arrived) from China. Every design I made fora number of years was for Gump’s. They kept me busy.”
Eventually Pineda’s workshop expanded to over 100 silversmiths. Pineda’s creativity flourished and his designs became more experimental and increasinglysophisticated.
While Pineda’s seven decades of seemingly endless creativity is inspiring to all, in New Mexico, a place called home by so many skilled designers and artists, thisexhibition is not only seductive but a potential generator of not yet imagined material consequences.
If you go
WHAT: “Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda”
WHERE: Museum of International Folk Art, on Museum Hill, 706 Camino Lejo, off the Old Santa Fe Trail
WHEN: Through Jan. 2, 2011
HOURS: Daily 10 a.m.-5 p.m. through Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 6. From Sept. 13, Tuesday through Sunday; closed on Mondays.
COST: $6 New Mexico residents; $9 nonresidents. New Mexico residents with ID free Sunday. Students with ID $1 discount. New Mexico resident seniors (60+) with IDfree Wednesdays. Free 5-8 p.m. Fridays.
CONTACT: 505-476-1200 or www.moifa. org
STUNNING IN SILVER http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...
1 of 3 4/27/11 12:43 PM
COURTESY “SILVER SEDUCTION: THE ART OF MEXICAN MODERNIST ANTONIO PINEDA”
Antonio Pineda incorporated pre-Columbian motifs in this brooch with onyx mask decorated with silver, onyx, opal and copper.
COURTESY MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART
An amethyst cabochon is set in the shadow box of this modernist domed silver cuff by Antonio Pineda.
STUNNING IN SILVER http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...
2 of 3 4/27/11 12:43 PM
COURTESY “SILVER SEDUCTION: THE ART OF MEXICAN MODERNIST ANTONIO PINEDA”
Antonio Pineda (1919-2009) designed this roof tile-inspired silver necklace with amethyst in the 1940s.
STUNNING IN SILVER http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...
3 of 3 4/27/11 12:43 PM
