Integración plástica: The Postwar Synthesis of the Arts as Seen from Mexico in 1952

Integración plástica describes the exterior reliefs and sculptures that Mexico City–based artists, including David Álfaro Siqueiros, Juan O'Gorman, Diego Rivera, Carlos Mérida, and Mathias Goeritz, integrated into modern architectural complexes during Mexico's postwar “economic miracle.” Key examples were created in Mexico City in 1952 across a broad aesthetic spectrum: from the national, realist content of postrevolutionary muralists including Siqueiros and Rivera, to the abstract and nonobjective designs of Mérida and Goeritz, who worked in consonance with Le Corbusier's calls for a postwar synthèse des arts majeurs as an antidote to Soviet socialist realism. The tense debate waged among these artists has been understood in a national frame, obscuring the extent to which Mexico-based integración plástica actively participated in an international Cold War battle concerning the appropriate forms for large-scale public art, in which figuration was aligned with communism and abstraction with capitalism—most notably in Mérida's native Guatemala.