Walking around Mexico City is a dazzling smorgasbord for the eyes. Tropical green strikes me from a juice stand as I turn a corner in the Coyocán neighborhood; above me, flamingo pink and golden yellow paper banners sway in the wind and red ochre bounces off an abstract mural, while a cobalt blue building seems to cast its own light on the street under the hot sun.
The city’s uninhibited visual flair—a vernacular that animates urban facades, markets and even the flashy boats in the Xochimilco canals—no doubt has ancestral roots. It’s easy to imagine the kaleidoscopic charm of its predecessor, the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlán, where pyramids were not the drab grey they are now but painted in a fiery hematite red, and iridescent green quetzal feathers flashed on the heads of those who strolled through the massive marketplace. This essential language turns up later in the spirited vibrancy of folk art and in the refined palette of Mexican Modernism, influenced by remarkable twentieth-century artists like Mathias Goeritz, Chucho Reyes and Frida Kahlo.
This wild spectrum thrums with the city’s bold and warm character, one of the many reasons it’s such an inspiring place in which to live. I also see it as an evolving expression of the times, a declaration of optimism and a strong desire to live richly, which is present in so many other aspects of Mexican life, like its celebrated maximalist cuisine and its ever-flourishing art scene.
The following photographs come from wandering around a few chromatic highlights of my hometown, from the chaotic patchwork of street market plastic tarps to the sublime use of light, space and color in the work of architect Luis Barragán. These essential and endemic hues seem to suggest that, in spite of smog, traffic, overcrowding and even the occasional massive earthquake or global pandemic, life in this town is something to celebrate.
Above: The delightful rooftop courtyard at Casa Luis Barragán with its striking angles. For Barragán, light and color were fundamental aspects of architecture.
(Images at top: Left: The Caballito, a monumental sculpture by the artist known as Sebastian, radiating its warm yellow presence under the sun in Reforma avenue; Middle: A hot pink corner in Pritzker Prize-winning architect Luis Barragán’s house—this hue was essential to his vivid and sophisticated palette; Right: Detail of the Torres de Satellite. These building-size monolithic concrete towers are a modernist masterpiece by Mathias Goeritz and Luis Barragán, with Chucho Reyes as a collaborator.)
Left: Accents inside Barragán’s home that speak to his unmistakable chromatic sensibility, with painting by Mathias Goeritz; Middle: Traditional talavera tableware on bright pink shelves and wall; Right: Painting by German artist and master of color combinations, Josef Albers.
Above: A typical crazy-plastic-tarp-color-patchwork-street-market being temporarily set up at the Monumento a la Revolución Plaza.
