Skip to main content
Event - this is a past event

Work in Progress Summer 2025 - 'Esoteric Aesthetics and Gendered Exclusions in Post-Revolutionary Mexican Visual Art'

Event information>

Dates

This is a past event
Time
2:00 pm to 3:00 pm
Location

Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB

Institute

The Warburg Institute

Event type

Lecture

Event series

Warburg Work in Progress

Contact

020 7862 8910

Mariano Villalba (Postdoctoral Fellow in Spirituality and the Arts): 'Esoteric Aesthetics and Gendered Exclusions in Post-Revolutionary Mexican Visual Art'

Mexican muralism emerged after the 1910 Revolution as a state-sponsored initiative aimed at shaping national identity through public art. While muralists frequently drew on Catholic iconography to promote narratives of mestizaje, social justice, and Indigenous heritage, this lecture examines how esoteric ideas and imagery were also systematically employed to support the pedagogical and ideological goals of the post-revolutionary state. Artists such as Diego Rivera incorporated Rosicrucian and Masonic elements into official commissions, reinterpreting the pre-Hispanic past through esoteric references that positioned ancient Mexico as the cradle of traditions like Rosicrucianism and yoga. Although several women artists, including María Izquierdo and Sofía Bassi, also engaged with esoteric traditions, particularly Theosophy and alchemy, they were largely excluded from the muralist canon. Their spiritual worldviews and allegorical modes of representation challenged the gendered hierarchies and ideological boundaries that shaped post-revolutionary cultural policy. This lecture explores how esoteric aesthetics became a contested space for negotiating artistic legitimacy, gender, and national identity in twentieth-century Mexico.

Mariano Villalba is a historian of religions specializing in esotericism in colonial and modern Latin America. He holds a joint PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Lausanne and the École Pratique des Hautes Études. His dissertation on the German occultist Arnold Krumm-Heller (1876–1949) and the role of modern esoteric currents in shaping Mexican national identity during the 1910 Revolution forms the basis of his forthcoming book, Occult Mexico: The Imagination of Mexican Antiquity, from the Colonial Era to the Revolution (Oxford University Press).

He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Spirituality and the Arts at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, in collaboration with the Warburg Institute, the Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (University of Amsterdam), and the Giorgio Cini Foundation. His project, Occult Movements and Mexican Mural Art, explores the influence of esoteric currents on post-revolutionary visual culture, with particular attention to women artists such as María Izquierdo, Cordelia Urueta, and Sofía Bassi. This research is featured in a digital exhibition he curated, hosted by the Center: www.occultmexicanart.com.

ATTENDANCE FREE IN PERSON OR ONLINE WITH ADVANCE BOOKING

Image: Roberto Montenegro, The Feast of the Holy Cross (La Fiesta de la Santa Cruz), 1923–1924: former Jesuit Temple of St Peter and St Paul, Mexico City.

This page was last updated on 16 May 2025