Mexican Art at WestConn (in English)

Provenance documentation tells the story of how a piece of art came to be where it physically resides in the world, and that story can contain enough curious twists and turns that it can even overshadow the story of the creation of the piece itself.  

This exhibit is an assemblage of art whose provenance story begins in Mexico and has for the time being, oddly enough, stopped 2600 miles to the north and east of Mexico City in Danbury, Connecticut. 

The inspiration for this exhibit began in 2007 with one piece of sculpture.  The WCSU Archives staff were asked by the then Library Director to remove from a staff conference room a medium sized plastic and wood sculpture of a seated human figure.  Rather than throw the sculpture away, which had been suggested, the Archive added the piece, which staff rather liked, to the small collection of art in the University’s Archive.  

Moving the piece revealed a small label underneath its wooden base, "H.H. Ysenbourg".  For eight years, the piece was part of the decorations in the Archive’s reading room without much consideration until a former dean donated his art collection to the University. Archive staff were among those sent to inspect the items to be donated and discovered that this former dean had many pieces that looked similar to the H.H. Ysenbourg statue, and upon closer examination, found that the pieces were all indeed by this same Ysenbourg.  This discovery also brought to light that the piece once expelled from the Library conference room likely originally came to WCSU from this former dean.

Who was this Ysenbourg?

"Su obra mexicana fue claramente en su momento un agua fresca que no dejaron de percibir los artistas jóvenes.” - [Hofmann-Ysenbourg’s] Mexican work was clearly in its time a breath of fresh air that inspired young artists.

Herbert Hofmann-Ysenbourg (1907-1973) began his career in Frankfurt, Germany after the First World War.  The young Jewish sculptor trained in the Bauhaus workshops of Weimar Germany and then transplanted to Paris in the late 20s where he furthered his training under the guidance of Aristide Maillol.  Maillol had himself come to Paris forty years earlier from Roussillon on the Spanish border with France.  From Paris, Hofmann-Ysenbourg was invited to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was introduced to the works of the Mexican painter Jose Clemente Orozco.  Judging from Hofmann Ysenbourg’s later works, Orozco’s influence was significant.  Orozco’s incorporation of the visual traditions of Mexico with the minimal, geometric abstract forms likely reminded Hofmann-Ysenbourg of what he had seen in contemporary European sculpture of the period.  His admiration of Orozco led him to the vibrant artistic community in Mexico City in 1939 which already was home to many expatriated europeans. 

"Hofmann's art, his vigor and his charm, lie in the movement of the masses. A creative artist, who transforms nature; that he projects onto the object his, the feeling of him, the plastic vision of him..." -Paul Westheim

According to Mary Panzer of the Smithsonian: "In the 1940s, Mexico became a magnet for European refugee artists associated with the Surrealist movement, and after World War II, American artists including many African Americans used the GI Bill to finance their studies in Mexican schools."  Antonio Luna Arroyo wrote of Hofmann-Ysenbourg that he became fascinated with the artistic tradition of Mexico and adopted it as his new home where he met and married a young art student, Kitzia Domenge.  

Domenge became a well-known artist in her own right, mostly for her stained glass work, and collaborated with her husband on the Iglesia de San José del Altillo in Coyoacán, Mexico. Domenge’s niece was also a well-known sculptor.

Though Hofmann-Ysenbourg belonged to an earlier generation, his expression of form fell into line with the ‘Generación de la Ruptura’ who had rejected the dominant style of the Mexican muralists for a more minimal, primal, and modern aesthetic.  Generación de la Ruptura set the stylistic trend in Mexico through the 1950s into the 60s and Hofmann-Ysenbourg’s work exemplified that trend. Despite his affinity for more modern expression of form, Hofmann-Ysenbourg continued to be influenced by Mexican colonial painting and was a connoisseur of pre-Columbian archeology and mural painting.  His most popular works combine new world and old world aesthetics, and his work can appear pre-Columbian and at the same time distinctly of the 1960s. Hofmann-Ysenbourg presented through his art an ascendent Mexico whose creative modernity and societal progress were inextricably linked.

The placement of Hofmann-Ysenbourg sculpture in public spaces in Mexico and South America such as the Nacional Financiera and the Corporate Offices of Supermercados SA in Mexico City are examples of his appeal in the early 1960s. Hofmann-Ysenbourg's combining of cultural influences was his own 'immigrant aesthetic' that in the end is a celebration of Mexican culture.

There is little evidence that Hofmann-Ysenbourg ever achieved much if any recognition outside of Mexico.  For his one known U.S. showing, a New York Times reviewer said of his work on exhibit at the Forum Gallery in New York:

In many of [his pieces] there are glimpses of an impulse that was frozen out in the finish.  Occasionally his club-headed people resist a numbing stylization to maintain some sort of formal vitality… a disappointing show.  (New York Times - May 4, 1963, pg L 22- Proquest, January 27, 2018)

It was around the same time of this New York exhibition that Hofmann-Ysenbourg’s work caught the eye of a young executive and chemist, Dr. Al Stewart.  We don’t know if Stewart, who lived in New York around that time, saw the show, but it is apparent that he visited Mexico City in the early 1960s. 

Dr. Stewart had been among the first African-Americans to become an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II.  He then was able to earn a Ph.D. from the University of St. Louis, the first African-American to do so only after prominent faculty at the University threatened resignation unless Stewart was admitted. 

The art Stewart acquired in his life shows that he developed an enduring appreciation for Mexican art in particular.  Stewart was also involved with the development and use of plastics and Hofmann-Ysenbourg's incorporation of the material in his work may have also fueled his interest.  Regardless of his reasons, Stewart acquired a significant number of Hofmann-Ysenbourg's works and they eventually ended up in his home in Connecticut where, later in life, Stewart served as a dean of WestConn‘s School of Business after having spent much of his career prior at Union Carbide. 

Stewart had also acquired pieces by two other Mexican artists, Fernando Leal (1896-1964) and Joseph Raskob (1905-1994).  Leal was a native of Mexico City and was originally known as a muralist and was one of the first artists to use indigenous themes.  Raskob, who also spent time in the United States, was described in a New York Times write-up for a 1959 exhibit as being a Lithuanian-born artist with studios in Mexico City.  Stewart, apparently, acquired pieces by these two artists in the early 1960s.

So, on first glance, we had our objects for an interesting exhibition of Mexican art collected by Dr. Al Stewart; however, on second glance, we realized that WCSU has in its collections other pieces from the same general period that would fall into the category of Mexican art.  Foremost in that category are a series of Donald Moss oil paintings that were commissioned for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

Donald Moss was a veteran of the Second World War and worked for many years as a successful graphic artist whose specialty was sports.  For the 1968 Summer Olympics, he was commissioned to create pieces to be used for promotional materials that showcased the modern designs of sports venues but also reflecting pre-Columbian aesthetics.  At the end of his career, Moss taught graphic arts at WCSU and upon his death donated materials to the college including the commissioned pieces for the Olympics.

These pieces embody the Peter Max-inspired graphic arts of the 1960s mixed with Moss’ take on the pre-columbian, providing an interesting backdrop for the Hofmann-Ysenboug sculpture.

There was one more piece that we decided to add to this exhibit.  It is a psychedelic painting that had spent years stacked in a storage closet filled with art owned by WCSU. We wondered rather randomly if it was also Mexican. Like the Hofmann-Ysenburg statue in the library conference room, we had taken a liking to a colorful piece entitled “Captured Atom” and hung it in the Archivist’s office.  All that was known was that it had a label on the back with the title and it was signed J. Espinosa; apparently the Art Department had purchased this painting in the early 1970s. The Archive was able to determine that the piece was by Jorge E. Espinosa, a Mexican painter who in the early 1970s painted using a technique similar to what is used to marbleize paper.  The resulting pieces Espinosa did in this way are a mixture of the purely psychedelic with what best can be described as pulp science fiction cover art. "Captured Atom’s" formlessness is a fitting opposite book end in the exhibit in contrast to Hofmann-Ysenbourg’s redefinition of form embodied in his seated figure.

This assemblage of Mexican pieces also speaks to the borderlessness and persistence of art -  the fact that this exhibit exists at all is an illustration of art’s ability to speak across national and temporal boundaries while moving us to admire and protect it. 

Finally, this exhibit is a celebration of serendipity.  It is fitting to shine a light on the fortuitous chain of events that brought this material together to be preserved at our small State college on the western edge of New England because it is, after all, the opportunities for serendipity that we are in the business of providing for our students. 

A partial list of additional sources:

1. "Al Stewart: Still a champion of education after 50 years." News-Times. Accessed February 1, 2018. http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Al-Stewart-Still-a-champion-of-education-after-233367.php.
2. Canaday, John. "Housing Moderns In Mexico." New York Times (New York), April 18, 1965. Accessed February 1, 2018.
3. De Neuvillate, Alfonso.  “Herbert Hofmann Ysenbourg.” Sucesos (Mexico City), August 26, 1967.  Accessed March 13, 2022.
4. Goldman, Shifra Meyerowitz. "Nueva presencia: the human image in contemporary Mexican art." Ph.D. diss., 1977.
5. H.D. "AMONG THE OTHER SHOWS." New York Times (1923-), Apr 27, 1941. https://wcsu.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/among-other-shows/docview/106090244/se-2?accountid=40083.
6. Luna Arroyo, Antonio. "El escultor Herbert Hofmann Isenbourg." Cuadernos de bellas artes. no. 3 (March 1961): 44-52. Accessed February 1, 2018
7. Nelken, Margarita. "Nuevos Aspectos de la Plastica Mexicana / New Aspects Of Mexican Plastic Arts." Artes De México, no. 33 (1961): 1-10. http://www.jstor.org.wcsu.idm.oclc.org/stable/24312126
8. Olson, Emily. "Transcending "Insider" Art: Enrique Chavarría, Surrealism, and Outsider Art." Ph.D. diss., Thesis / Dissertation ETD, 2011.
9. History Makers interview with Al Stewart (https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/albert-stewart)
10. México en el mundo de las colecciónes de arte: México contemporáneo. 1, Volume 6, 1994, pg 132. 
11. Panzer, Mary. "The American Love Affair With Mexico, 1920—1970." Archives of American Art Journal 49, no. 3/4 (2010): 14–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23025807.
12. Scharfstein, Ben-Ami. Art Without Borders : A Philosophical Exploration of Art and Humanity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=285086&site=ehost-live&scope=site.