Carlos Obregón Santacilia (1896–1961) was a Mexican

art déco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920s to early 1930s, ...

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

. He trained at the Academy of San Carlos during the

Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution () was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from 20 November 1910 to 1 December 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It saw the destruction of the Federal Army, its ...

. He claimed a distinguished Mexican heritage, as great grandson of

Benito Juárez Benito Pablo Juárez García (; 21 March 1806 – 18 July 1872) was a Mexican politician, military commander, and lawyer who served as the 26th president of Mexico from 1858 until his death in office in 1872. A Zapotec peoples, Zapotec, he w ...

and grand nephew of Alvaro Obregón. Obregón saw the new architecture following the violent and destructive Mexican Revolution as the government's impulse to be constructive. Among other works, Obregón Santacilia redesigned the building housing the Secretariat of Foreign Relations, at the request of Alberto J. Pani. The building went from a

Louis XIV style The Louis XIV style or ''Louis Quatorze'' ( , ), also called French classicism, was the style of architecture and decorative arts intended to glorify King Louis XIV and his reign. It featured majesty, harmony and regularity. It became the official ...

structure to a neo-Colonial work, opened in 1924. Minister of Public Education in the Obregón government,

José Vasconcelos José Vasconcelos Calderón (28 February 1882 – 30 June 1959), called the "cultural " of the Mexican Revolution, was an important Mexicans, Mexican writer, philosopher, and politician. He is one of the most influential and controversial pers ...

asked Obregón Santacilia to design a large primary school in Mexico City, to be built in "new nationalist perspective." He also designed the new building for the Secretariat of Health and Welfare (1926), later decorated with murals by

Diego Rivera Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957) was a Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the Mexican muralism, mural movement in Mexican art, Mexican and international art. Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted mural ...

. He reworked the abandoned legislative palace of the Díaz era and transformed it to the Monumento a la Revolución, located in

Mexico City Mexico City is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Mexico, largest city of Mexico, as well as the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North America. It is one of the most important cultural and finan ...

Career

During his early career of the 1920's, Carlos Obregon Santacilia had taken part in designing the main auditorium a
UNAM
He along with other architects lik
Mauricio Gomez Mayorga
and Jose Villagran Garcia, who worked on the design of the museum of UNAM, as well as plenty of students were unknowingly revolutionaries of modernism in Mexico due to the innovative ideas implemented in their designs. He and Garcia were applying new age solutions to architectural issues faced from the aftermath of the revolution in Mexico at the same time of th
muralist movement
Obregon Santacilia was involved in the architectural community so much that he was made the president of the Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos’. Santacilia had introduced the contest in '' El Universal'' newspaper 1932 edition for who could come up with a progressive approach to housing that supported the working class. This promoted designs that would give better quality and spatial conditions for the proletariats to which
Juan Legaretta
won first prize and his modernistic pueblo-styled buildings came to fruition in 1934. In 1922, one of Obregon Santacilia's first commissions was significant to the independence of South America and was a monument designed for the Mexico Pavilion in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil; however, one of the first introductions of art deco in Mexico would be in 1923 when he remodeled the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs In many countries, the ministry of foreign affairs (abbreviated as MFA or MOFA) is the highest government department exclusively or primarily responsible for the state's foreign policy and relations, diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral r ...

. A structure more significant to his career would be the commission from Profirio Diaz for the monument of the revolution located in the Plaza de la Republica 1937 and the most unique aspect of this project would be that Santacilia repurposed the metal structure left behind by the once Legislative Palace. Santacilia was key to the refreshing design of the Ministry of Health building 1925-1929 because he acknowledged how colonial influences infiltrated Mexico's architecture and in order to bring a sense of nationality across the country, as the government requested, his choice of style suggests that of a pre-Columbian Mexico.

Legacy

Despite having professors that pushed the European style like most art academies, Obregon Santacilia used an unorthodox and more indigenous approach to his work that gave Mexico a new identity. His designs were not particularly French like his past professors had trained him to produce but instead he decided to use the tapered and organic styles of pre-colonized Mexico and apply that to modernist architecture. He completely rejected the concept of keeping the European identity and instead reevaluated Mexican cultural identity in architecture Aside from being known for bringing personality back to Mexican architecture, one of his apprentices was the renowned

Juan O'Gorman Juan O'Gorman (6 July 1905 – 17 January 1982) was a Mexican painter and architect. Early life and family Juan O'Gorman was born on 6 July 1905 in Coyoacán, then a village to the south of Mexico City and now a borough A borough is an admini ...

who is popular in the architect community and had gone on to work with

. Santacilia himself had collaborated with Rivera for his unique structure Hotel del Prado to which the artist painted the dining room with a piece Museo Mural. Carlos Obregon Santacilia has made many contributions through changing the standards in the architectural community in Mexico and his publications and theories. He has an entire book dedicated to the influences in his career in Mexico City titled Carlos Obregon Santacilia: A Foreunner of Mexican Modernity by Victor Jimenez. Sanatcilia eventually succumbed to his cancer and died in Mexico City in 1961 where his career was most evident.

Publications

*''El Maquinismo, la Vida y la Arquitectura/Machines, Life, and Architecture''. Cleveland: J.H. Jansen 1939. *''Cincuenta (50) Años de Arquitectura Mexicana (1900-1950)''. Mexico City: Editorial Patria 1952. *''El Monumento a la Revolución, Simbolismo e Historia''. Mexico: Secretaria de Educación Pública, Departamento de Divulgación 1960.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Obregon Santacilia, Carlos Art Deco architects Modernist architects from Mexico 1896 births 1961 deaths Art Deco architecture in Mexico 20th-century Mexican architects

Career

Legacy

Publications

Further reading

See also

References