El Náhuatl 1964

Carlos Merida made this painting, El Náhuatl, with angular shapes and a stark palette that feels both ancient and modern. The way the colors are laid down, flat and opaque, makes me think about how we build up images from basic forms. The deep red backdrop really throws the grays and blacks into sharp relief, doesn’t it? It's like the painting is breathing, pushing and pulling at the surface. And those little pops of green? Like a secret code, winking out from within the structure. I'm drawn to that small square of green near the center, it feels like a window, or maybe a memory. Merida's work has a kinship with Torres-Garcia, in how he seeks to reinvent indigenous visual vocabularies through modern abstraction, and it reminds us that art is always a conversation, layering new visions over old stories. It's not about answers, but the questions it stirs up.