Carlos Mérida, affectionately known as the great Tata, was much more than an exceptional painter. In the memory of his family he remains a good-looking, elegant man, with an education and a presence that made him seem like a lord English, but also as a deeply human being. His true greatness lay not in his bearing, but in his ability to be loving, patient, and consistent with unwavering morals. He never spoke ill of anyone and always stayed true to his values. He was a good son, a good brother, a good husband and a good father. When he entered a house, a restaurant or a studio, the entire space was illuminated with a light that seemed to emanate from himself. It was pure cordiality, and that essence is clearly reflected in his artistic legacy.
In his paintings, that inner light became brushstrokes full of balance, love and harmony. Mérida maintained that “great painters do not copy, they nourish themselves from what they have around them.” His own inspiration was fueled by the Mayan worldview: his extraordinary mathematical knowledge, the greatness of his architecture, the monumentality of his murals and the symbolic force of his sculpture. He discovered that behind the beauty of these cultures was the basis of abstract art, built from the golden section, mathematics and abstraction that transcends the figurative.
That spirit of constant searching connected him with music. He loved the great Russian classics such as Mussorgsky and Rachmaninov, whose dramatic intensity inspired him to explore the depths of the human soul. But he was also attracted to jazz, a genre that, like cubism in painting, broke molds and opened new paths. For Mérida, music and painting were part of the same universal conversation: a dialogue of harmony and rupture, of structure and freedom.
In this vision of art as a language without borders, Mérida recognized the transcendence of different eras and schools. He admired the essential simplicity of rock caves, where a few basic lines and colors had managed to convey emotion and spirituality. He valued the Italian Renaissance, which restored proportion and humanity to art. And it celebrated the revolution of Picasso, Miró, Kandinsky and Paul Klee, who forever changed the way we understand modernity.
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Carlos Mérida: the light that transcended the canvas
His gaze also extended to sculpture: from ancient Egypt to Rodin, Giacometti and Henry Moore, until reaching the 20th century with the work of Calder. The latter’s art in motion seemed to him one of the most important creative peaks, impossible to surpass. For him, this whole accumulation of influences was not a simple repertoire of references, but rather an impulse to go beyond the conventional, to find in each stroke the light and harmony that he sought so much.
That need to transcend the ordinary and capture the spiritual essence made Carlos Mérida a unique figure within Latin American art. His work dialogues with the indigenous traditions of Mesoamerica and, at the same time, with the most innovative currents of universal art. He knew how to build a bridge between cultural heritage and modernity, between the mathematics of the ancients and the abstraction of the moderns, between the color of daily life and the spirituality of the soul.
Carlos Mérida not only changed the way of seeing art in Mexico and Latin America: he inserted himself into the broader conversation of universal art. His legacy is not limited to canvases and murals; It is also a testimony of life, one in which the coherence between thought, work and human affection became the true trace of a man who painted not only with his hand, but with the light of his essence.
Today, to remember it is to remember that art has the ability to transcend the material and touch the deepest part of the spirit. Mérida’s work continues to shine because it is impregnated with the harmony that he himself radiated in life. For his family, for those who knew him and for all those who contemplate his paintings, Carlos Mérida continues to be that light that illuminates, that balance that inspires and that love that is transmitted in each stroke.Carlos Mérida: the light that transcended the canvas
The author is Mexican with Italian roots and a direct descendant of the Mérida Luna artistic lineage. Great-granddaughter of the maestro Carlos Mérida and granddaughter of the dancer Ana Mérida, she has dedicated her life to cultural promotion and the creation of bridges between art and international strategy. From Mexico he promotes projects where art, legacy and emotional diplomacy converge.
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