Page 110 - Libro Max Cetto

Preface

entirely of rosewood, and with another emigrant colleague of his, Otto Winkler, in the
plans for the Sidney Kahn house. Some role must have also been played by the fact that
Cetto, from 1960 on, often traveled to lecture at prestigious US universities.
Before mentioning Cetto’s third archive, it’s worth mentioning that the archives of the
architectural historian and critic Esther McCoy, digitized in their entirety at the Smithson-
ian Institution in Washington, D.C., include her correspondence with my father. There one
can find, for example, information and photographs connected to the first houses that Cetto
designed and built in Jardines del Pedregal. 7
Continuing with this aside, I have my own personal Cetto archive. It fills the eyes of spe-
cialists with excitement and their enthusiasm is contagious. Such was the experience of Daniel
Garza Usabiaga, curator of the 2001 Cetto exhibition at Mexico City’s Museum of Modern
Art, and of Cristina López Uribe and Salvador Lizárraga, happily the authors of one of the
texts that accompany this publication.
Finally, we have that part of the architect’s documentary legacy that scholars of his work
most often turn to in our country: the Max Cetto Archive at the Universidad Autónoma
Metropolitana (uam), located in the audiovisual section of the uam Azcapotzalco library.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that here we are talking about two archives, because
the photographic collection is considerable, containing photos by Cetto himself, as well as
by Guillermo Zamora, Armando Salas Portugal and Lola Álvarez Bravo, among others,
featuring not only images of the author’s work, but of architecture in general: slides with
which he illustrated his lectures on Mexican architecture at foreign universities. Syntheti-
cally speaking, it is in this archive that most of the plans from the architect’s Mexican pe-
riod are to be found, as well as correspondence, the manuscript –the final set of mockups– of
Modern Architecture in Mexico/Arquitectura moderna en México, architectural journals with
his notes, publications from around the world that refer to his works and essays and confer-
ence texts he wrote, some of which have not been published to this date.
Susanne Dussel was in charge of the preliminary organization of Cettoʼs documentary
8
legacy; her thesis was published as a book in 1995. Susanneʼs work has formed the basis
for later research into Cetto, as has the monograph by Humberto Ricalde, Max’s disciple,
published ten years later. 9

On the Relevance of this Publication

The first bilingual version of the book was published by Gerd Hatje in Stuttgart in 1961,
under the title Moderne Architektur in Mexiko. A few months later, the English/Spanish
version, with limited circulation in Mexico, would be printed in Germany, but published by
Praeger in New York.
In 2011, Mexico City’s Museum of Modern Art printed a facsimile of the English/
Spanish version in a print run of 1,000 copies. On that occasion, Modern Architecture
in Mexico/Arquitectura moderna en México had an introductory essay by the art historian
Daniel Garza Usabiaga, based on his museographic script for the exhibition that ran from
September 2011 to January 2012. Garza Usabiaga’s essay focuses not exclusively on Cetto’s
biography and architecture, but also on his facets as a designer and painter. The exhibition
showcased mockups, large-format photographs, furniture designed by Cetto and several

7 Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Esther McCoy Papers. By way of example, according to my consultation dated
March 1, 2017, the following was to be found: Box 33, Folder 51: Cetto, Max, various projects, circa 1950. This folder
contains six photos of the house at Avenida Fuentes 140 (front and back in each case). On the back it reads, written by
Esther McCoy: “Residence in the Pedregal Mexico City Architect Max Cetto,” the photos are by Guillermo Zamora.
8 Susanne Dussel Peters, Max Cetto (1903-1980) Arquitecto mexicano-alemán (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma
Metrropolitana Azcapotzalco, 1995).
9 Humberto Ricalde, Max Cetto: Vida y obra (Mexico City: Col. Talleres, Facultad de Arquitectura, Unam, 1995).

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