The 'sea' fountain at the entrance of Camino Real with Mathias Goeritz' pink sculptural wall in the background.
Mathias Goeritz' see through sculptural wall at the entrance of Camino Real
Mathias Goeritz's sculptural wall at the opening of the Camino Real Hotel for the Mexico 1968 Olympics
"The screen that helps shape the forecourt of the Camino Real Mexico City developed initially from an intellectual process. I thought about joining some oversized Albers squares to make a screen, and after arriving at a design, with some trepidation I had it painted black to contrast with the surrounding walls , which were white. Then, after living with the space for awhile, I found it too formal, too serious, and too conceptual. The hotel management agreed, so I repainted it magenta, and in the process added yellow to some of the walls. This incident encouraged my growing obsession for color."
from Ricardo Legorreta, 'The Architecture of Ricardo Legorreta', University of Texas Press, 1990
(notice Legorreta doesn't mention the collaboration with Goeritz in the text, also he uses the word intellectual, in contrast to Goeritz' term of 'emotional' architecture)
Original view of the very elegant lobby of Camino Real with Rufino Tamayo's 'El Hombre Frente al Infinito', 1971. Check the pink sofas, the beige leather lounge sofas, the purple wool carpets, the Saarineen chairs, and the silver blown glass lamps. In a period before globalization, and when importing was not that easy, most of the interiors were home made. They are not there anymore.
The Camino Real was built in Barragan style, by architect Ricardo Legorreta for the Mexico City 1968 Olympics. The Hotel was commissioned by Banamex (Banco Nacional de Mexico), a private bank that was directed by Agustin Legorreta, the architect's cousin. When it opened, the Camino Real was a master example of what a hotel could be, elegant, modern, austere and spacious and with artist's commissions inside it. More than a hotel, something between a hacienda, a monastery, and a museum, all built in a very Modern Mexican Style.
"Public areas are very spacious, for what we saved in structural costs and costly finishes could be put into making the experience of the hotel more enjoyable through the luxury of space. Works of art were either chosen or commissioned for specific spaces, so they are more than decoration; they are intrinsic to the character of each place in the hotel."
"The interior finishes were shocking for their time. Even a year after the hotel opened, Mexican architects asked me, “When is it going to be completed?” The hotel management, too was edgy the first year."
from Ricardo Legorreta, 'The Architecture of Ricardo Legorreta', University of Texas Press, 1990
Look at the Rufino Tamayo mural at the Camino Real lobby today, surrounded by a horrible carpet, horrible furniture, bad taste silver sphere, it all looks like a cheap Starbucks cafe. After the 1991 privatisation of bank Banamex (Mexican banks were nationalized in 1982 by president Jose Lopez Portillo, they were privatised again in 1990 by president Carlos Salinas de Gortari). Banamex was bought by Roberto Hernandez and Alfredo Harp, and in 2000 Banamex sold the Camino Real to businessman Oligario Vazquez Raña. In 2001 Citibank/Citigroup Inc. purchased Banamex for US $12.5 billion.
More pictures of the lobby today, redesigned by Legorreta himself and his son, 32 years later. Look at the onyx lamp sculpture he designed for the 'new lobby'. This is the best of the new interventions in the hotel, most of the new ones are vulgar, generic and commercial. Still, some of the old glories of the hotel remain...
Mathias Goeritz, 'Abstracto en Dorado', 1968
Mathias Goeritz, 'Abstracto en Dorado', 1968, still there today
Pedro Friedeberg, '16 Adivinanzas de un Astronauta Hindu', 1968, still at Camino Real today. Apparently the Friedeberg mural was moved when a stairway to a new parking garage was built, and the artist had to modify it, ruining its original effect, which was more like a Baroque theater.
Mirror reflecting Friedeberg's work
One of the public transition spaces of Camino Real, where Alexander Calder's 1968 'Untitled' sculpture was located. As a young boy I remember great fun running and playing under the sculpture, which was like a big, giant, abstract spider or elephant that almost didn't fit inside the space.
Here is the Calder lobby today, without the Calder sculpture. Today it hosts an 'amazing' Token coffee/bar instead!
Calder's sculpture was sold on the 11 of November of 2003 by Christie's New York for US $5,831,500 in the Post War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale:
Lot 58, Sale 1301
Alexander Calder (1898-1976)
Untitled
signed with monogram and dated 'CA 68' (on one of the legs)
stabile--painted steel
16 x 20½ x 11 ft. (4.9 x 6.3 x 3.3 m.)
Executed in 1968.
"Untitled was produced at a time when Calder's large-scale works were at the height of their critical acclaim, and by 1968 Calder had well worked out his practice and methodology of creating these commissions. In 1966, Calder went to Mexico to install El Sol Rojo, an eighty-foot-high pyramidal form that supports a huge sun-like disk, which was commissioned for the new Aztec Stadium that housed the 1968 Olympic Games. In the same way that El Sol Rojo alludes to Mexico's brilliant sun and ancient pyramids, Untitled, another Latin American commission, evokes the undulating landscape of the region. Sinuous and lithe, yet massive and arresting, this work is a perfect marriage of his formal and material acumen with the bravura and ambition of a mammoth scale."
from the Christie's sale catalogue
After some quick google research, it is clear that the 1968 Calder was bought by Jose Berardo for the Berardo Collection and now stands installed outside of the Centro Cultural Belem in Lisboa, in front of the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos.
Here is Calder's other remaining sculpture in Mexico, 'El Sol Rojo', 1966, outside the Azteca Stadium, where the football World Cup finals of 1970 and 1986 were played...
The Camino Real Hotel chain, was once Mexico's best and most elegant. Hotels like the Camino Real Ixtapa (now Las Brisas Ixtapa) and the Cancun Camino Real (now operating under the horrible name Dreams Cancun), both by Legorreta, as well as Las Brisas Hotel in Acapulco and Las Hadas in Manzanillo, used to be part of the chain. Today they are only sad reminders of their past glories. The Camino Real chain has only pushed it further by reproducing bad pink and yellow copies 'inspired' on the Mexico City hotel as part of the branding/idenitity of the chain in other cities of the Mexican Republic. The quality is such a bad caricature of the Camino Real's former self, that I'm even ashamed to post some of the photos. I'm sure the curious will find them in the internet.
Scholars of Mexican Modernism will also find Mexico City's Camino Real Hotel as one of the locations where Sam Peckinpah's cult 1974 film 'Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia' was shot. The film in which a Mexican crime lord demands the head of Alfredo Garcia (the man who got his daughter pregnant) is filled with violent blood bath scenes, a scenario not that different from the Mexico of today.
IT IS STUPID THAT NOBODY IN MEXICO HAD ENOUGH VISION TO MAKE CALDER'S SCULPTURE STAY IN MEXICO. IT IS CLEAR THAT IT WAS NOT A MATTER OF HAVING ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY IT, OR OF NEEDING CASH FROM ITS SALE, ONLY A MATTER OF PURE IGNORANCE. THE SCULPTURE WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY HAPPY IF IT HAD BEEN RELOCATED OUTSIDE OF THE MUSEO DE ARTE MODERNO OR THE TAMAYO MUSUEM IN MEXICO CITY... BUT THE IGNORANCE OF THE CULTURAL AUTHORITIES OF THE PERIOD WAS AS BIG AS THE ONE OF THE SALESMAN OF THE SCULPTURE...
Find here a list of Calder public sculptures around the world.
