The reality of fiction: the ECO by Mathias Goeritz

Abstract

Abstract This article covers the full biography of a building, the Experimental Museum El Eco, designed by Germanborn and Mexican émigré artist and architect Mathias Goeritz. It provides an approach intersecting the biography of the author, the history of the building, and prominent individuals of the two cultural traditions, German and Mexican, who participated in the creation of a very special and unique building: El Eco. On the one hand, the ethics of Expressionism, the interest in non-European art, the cult of primitivism and the aesthetic system of the pair of concepts abstraction-empathy, all stemming from German culture. On the other, the pantheistic religiosity of landscape, zoomorphism and anthropomorphism, the interest in masks, and the aesthetics of monumental scale, stemming from pre-Cortesian Mexican culture. Taking the stance of intertwining Mathias Goeritz parcours with those of individuals and issues from his German past and his Mexican future – highlighting the figures of Wilhelm Worringer, Paul Westheim, Luis Barragán, Edmundo O'Gorman, and Ida Rodríguez Prampolini – this article proposes a return trip from fiction to reality, following in the footsteps of the author and comparing them with the pathway of the very building El Eco.

Keywords

• Empathy, Gesamkunstwerk, tale, biography, America