In 1972, Eduardo Terrazas gave his first individual exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Entitled 's', which he also called the series of works that were exhibited there, this sample collected his pieces made of colored wool threads on wooden s covered with Campeche wax, a work that he undertook in collaboration with the Huichol artisan Santos Motoaaopohua. This ensemble of paintings is of utmost importance in the artist's career as they are the first pieces made with these materials and represent the fusion that would characterize his creative discourse: between geometric abstraction and a typically Mexican artisan technique.
During the preceding decade, Terrazas had dedicated himself to what was by then his best-known professional facet: architecture. For the 1968 Mexico Olympics, Terrazas, together with the architect and Olympic committee leader, Pedro Ramirez Vazquez and the rest of the work team, made a series of combinations for the various graphic and urban design applications that gave the event its image, inspired by the parallel and concentric lines of the crafts of the Huichol indigenous people, originally from the states of Jalisco and Nayarit As the artist himself points out: “my idea was to relate modern art to the concept of craftsmanship and the committee understood it very well. So we started with Mexico 68 and that's how the geometry of the logo came out with parallel lines (...) And this was inspired by a small Huichol piece.”[1]
This experience was capital for his artistic work, when at the beginning of the seventies his career began in a systematic and professional way with the works of the 's' series, such as 2.8 and 2.9, belonging to the Amparo Museum collection and which precede the monumental ensemble 'Possibilities of a Structure', of which this museum also has a unique piece. In the case of these 's', the echoes of the experience of early 20th century geometric abstraction are very present; especially in the one identified as 2.8, the reference to neoplasticism and the work of Theo van Doesburg is very direct.
However, the catalog of formal motifs and patterns in this early series is very varied, even when they are determined by an orthogonal and geometric spirit. What is truly innovative in the case of these 's', for the dense genealogy of pieces and names associated with the language of concrete art, is certainly the handmade texture provided by the stroke, or one could also say the drawing generated by the thread glued to the wood. The polished and industrial nature of the works associated with this artistic language of the twentieth century, with very smooth finishes and severely delineated planes, are transformed in Eduardo Terrazas' proposals into warm textile surfaces with subtle geometric drawings derived from the wool thread, which adds an organic, original and unique quality in the universe of abstract-geometric works.
CEP, November 2020.
[1] Obrist, Hans Ulrich. Conversaciones en México, México: Fundación Alumnos 47, 2016; pp. 284.
In 1972, Eduardo Terrazas gave his first individual exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Entitled 's', which he also called the series of works that were exhibited there, this sample collected his pieces made of colored wool threads on wooden s covered with Campeche wax, a work that he undertook in collaboration with the Huichol artisan Santos Motoaaopohua. This ensemble of paintings is of utmost importance in the artist's career as they are the first pieces made with these materials and represent the fusion that would characterize his creative discourse: between geometric abstraction and a typically Mexican artisan technique.
