MONUMENTAL MEXICO

The Olmecs are best known as the creators of Mexico’s first civilisation, and for making some of the country’s most extraordinary works of art. Claudia Zehrt surveys a major new exhibition that aims to bring their history and culture to a European audience, and includes many fascinating pieces that have never left Mexico before.

- Claudia Zehrt

Many visitors to Mexico travel to see the famous archaeological sites in the country’s central and southern regions. They explore the temple-pyramids of the Maya, the grandeur of the ancient city of Teotihuacan, or the remains of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (underneath Mexico City). Far fewer tourists make it to the archaeological sites and museums along Mexico’s Gulf Coast – a region mainly encompassed by the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco. Here, those who do undertake the journey find themselves in a subtropical wetland, criss-crossed by many rivers and creeks, mostly made up of floodplains along the coast and bounded by the mountains of the eastern Sierra Madre to the west. It is in this fertile area that we see the earliest beginnings of complex civilisation in Mesoamerica – the historical region that extends from central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. And it is here on the Gulf Coast that we find the first examples of many of the traits and motifs that would in subsequent millennia become defining characteristics of Mesoamerican art and iconography.

For those unable to make the journey to Mexico’s Gulf Coast, this year brings good news. A major new exhibition, featuring some of the most beautiful examples of art and archaeology from the area, is scheduled to open at the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris in October 2020. Featuring many pieces that have never before left Mexico, the show – entitled The Olmecs and the cultures of the Gulf of Mexico – aims to bring the history of the region closer to a European audience, providing a fascinating introduction to its art and an insight into the shared cosmovisión (‘world view’) of its people.