Werner Mathias Goeritz Brunner (4 April 1915, Danzig, German Empire[citation needed] – 4 August 1990, Mexico City) was a Mexican painter and sculptor of German origin. After spending much of the 1940s in North Africa and Spain, he and his wife, photographer Marianne Gast, immigrated to Mexico in 1949.
Mathias Goeritz was born in Danzig, German Empire in 1915[citation needed] and spent his childhood in Berlin. He began studying philosophy and the history of art at Berlin's Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität, now known as the Humboldt University of Berlin, in 1934.[1] He received a doctorate in art history from this institution in 1940.[1] His doctoral dissertation on the nineteenth-century German painter Ferdinand von Rayski was published as Ferdinand Von Rayski und die Kunst des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts.[2] During the course of his studies, Goeritz also trained as an artist at the Kunstgewerbe- und Handwerkerschule in Berlin-Charlottenberg (Applied arts and tradesmen's school), where he studied drawing with German artists Max Kaus and Hans Orlowski.[1]
Upon completion of his doctorate, Goeritz worked at Berlin's Nationalgalerie (National Gallery), now the Alte Nationalgalerie, under the supervision of nineteenth-century art specialist Paul Ortwin Rave.[1]
In early 1941, in the midst of the Second World War, Goeritz left Germany, settling first in Tetuan, Morocco. In 1942 he married photographer Marianne Gast, and the couple settled in Granada, Spain, just after the war ended in 1945.[3]
In June 1946, he had his first solo exhibition at the Librería-Galería Clan in Madrid under the pseudonym "Ma-Gó".[3] in 1947 the Goeritzs relocated to Madrid.[3] There, Goeritz developed a close friendship with Spanish sculptor Ángel Ferrant.[3]
In the summer of 1948, Goeritz and Ferrant traveled to visit the prehistoric paintings of the Cave of Altamira in the north of Spain, along with writer Ricardo Gullón and others. At that time Goeritz proposed the founding of an Escuela de Altamira (Altamira School), an association of artists and writers who would meet annually near the Cave, in 1948. The Escuela de Altamira would ultimately hold two meetings, in 1949 and 1950.[4]
In 1949, Through the intervention of Mexican architect Ignacio Díaz Morales, Goeritz was offered a job teaching art history to the students of the newly founded Escuela de Arquitectura in Guadalajara, Mexico,. In 1953 he first presented his "Manifiesto de la Arquitectura Emocional" (Emotional Architecture Manifesto) at the pre-inauguration of the Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City, which he designed in 1952–53. During the 1950s, Goeritz also collaborated with Luis Barragán to make monumental abstract sculptures in reinforced concrete, including El animal del Pedregal (The Animal of the Pedregal, 1951) and the Torres de la Ciudad Satélite (Towers of Satellite City, 1957).[citation needed]
In 1942 he married photographer Marianne Gast. He died in Mexico City on August 4, 1990.[citation needed]
Goeritz exhibited widely in Mexico and beyond throughout his life, and had a significant influence on younger Mexican artists such as Helen Escobedo and Pedro Friedeberg.
