By Francisco Peyret
The Ignacio Ramírez “El Nigromante” Cultural Center was inaugurated as we know it todays, on August 17, 1962. Ever since that time, it has been visited by locals, as well as national and international tourists. The outside visitors arrive in our city because they recognize the beauty of the colonial architecture, and the colorful traditions.
Over those 60 years, teachers and students have also passed through this school of fine arts; which has become an important part of the history of San Miguel. In the last third of the previous century, the city saw the arrival of a significant number of expatriates and a generation of hippies. Some have been well-recognized businessmen; and all these different people, and groups, together with the San Miguel community, have shaped tourism and the city of San Miguel that we live in today.
The story of how the School of Fine Arts emerged, has many key moments prior to 1962, the year of the official inauguration. In June of 1937, President Lázaro Cárdenas agreed to lend the ex-convent of Las Monjas to a group of people, led by the Peruvian artist Cossío del Pomar. In his memoirs, Pomar says that he had “drunk water from the stream, and according to old wisdom from the locals, whoever drinks that water has to come back.” That first visit was in 1929, and he did indeed return to San Miguel, and founded the first School of Fine Arts here.
Cossio del Pomar, Leobino Zavala, and José Mojica went to the city of Guanajuato, to speak to the governor about the project of founding a school of Fine Arts in San Miguel de Allende. What they needed was a venue for the project. According to Cossío del Pomar himself, “this is when the proposal for using the old convent of Las Monjas came up. The convent and church had been built in the 1700s by Lina, the daughter of Manuel Tomas de la Canal. The building was constructed with a beautiful quarry, and large cloisters. But by the 1920s it was in a state of dilapidation, not a single door remained in the frames, many had been removed together with the beautifully carved stone jambs. For a number of years, the rooms on the first floor, the only habitable ones, had served as barracks for a cavalry squadron.” Since the building was occupied by the army, the loan had to be arranged directly with the Federal Government, through the president of the republic himself. The president at that time was Lázaro Cárdenas, who had been in the military during the Mexican Revolution. He took all issues related to the army very seriously.
General Federico Montes, a native of San Miguel, and a figure with a remarkable military career, facilitated the meeting between Pomar and the President of the Republic. For the Governor of the State, the main concern was what would happen to the cavalry headquarters. But for General Cárdenas, economics was also a major concern. Mexico, like the rest of the world, was coming out of the 1929 financial crisis, and the Second World War was looming. Pomar offered to use his own resources, and argued that a group of North Americans, including Stirling Dickinson, would help him promote the school internationally; offering summer courses for young people and artists, mainly North Americans. The teaching staff that Pomar had gathered was also key to obtaining a positive response from President Cárdenas. The major artists of the day that Pomar said would teach at the school, were: Diego Rivera, Carlos Mérida, Pablo O’Higgins, Chávez Morado, Rufino Tamayo, Federico Cantú and Pedro Martínez, among others. That was how President Cárdenas officially ordered that the so-called «Las Monjas» building be placed at the disposal of Cossío del Pomar within 15 days, starting on June 16, 1937.
Once the tasks began, Stirling Dickinson took it upon himself to create: “Ten thousand catalogues, five thousand in English and five thousand in Spanish. These were sent to universities, colleges and cultural centers throughout America. The success of the school depended on the reception that the program would have, and the interest it aroused. A large part of the effort fell to Stirling Dickinson, an American painter and writer, a former Princeton student, who knew the psychology of his countrymen. Tall, lanky, incredibly skinny, and semi-bald, he projected the opposite image of the athlete he aspired to be.”
One hundred years after Mexico gained independence, San Miguel had become close to being a ghost town. Between Independence and the Revolution it had lost its oldest and most illustrious residents. Orchards, palaces, and convents were abandoned, and there was no industry to speak of. By the 1920s its population was around 12,000. But the authentic, beautiful architecture was still there as was the original social fabric. That is why a generation of sanmiguelenses, and foreigners had a vision of building a university, and a culturally strong city.
Carmen Masip, the first Director of the Cultural Center El Nigromante, said this in 1962: “San Miguel de Allende had a glorious past and a very poor present. But behold, at the beginning of the In the 1930s, a bullfighter, Pepe Ortiz, and an opera singer, José Mojica, arrived, and both began to attract their friends, who together with Leobino Zavala and other illustrious Sanmiguelenses formed the Society of Friends of San Miguel de Allende, revived the Theater of amateurs and home gatherings, where poetry is sung and read. The School of Fine Arts began to change the town; you have to refurbish houses to receive students, modernize kitchens and, above all, bathrooms, and understand what it means to deal with people from outside. Little by little, the people of San Miguel are assimilating the new life; social relations are established with the newcomers, small meetings are organized in the school with the teachers, young people who later became famous.
“Rufino and Olga Tamayo build a house; Chávez Morado and his Olga also farm on the way to El Atascadero together with Dickinson, teacher and secretary of the fledgling school. O´Higgins, Carlos Mérida, Alfredo Zalce, Federico Cantú, Pedro Martínez from Monterrey and Archipenko from Ukraine teach classes, and participate in the life of the town. There is no shortage of intrigues against this happy and carefree group, but things are going well in love and company…”
The history of Fine Arts and the Allende Institute were extremely important in making San Miguel a tourist destination. A good part of San Miguel’s charm lies in the history of these schools. It also thanks to those amazing characters, artists and cultural managers who for decades set upon fulfilling a vision.
We are reaching the first quarter of the 21st century, and San Miguel continues to grow. For many, it is not the way they feel it should be. The social composition is changing, as many young families come from foreign and national cities, but we also have digital nomads and many artists. Paradoxically, this is something that the COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated. Many of those who come to live here, have been fleeing from big cities, pollution and a dehumanized pace of life. Reflecting on the history of San Miguel, I believe that we should take advantage of the situation to establish culture and traditions as one of the central axes of the development of our community. Those of us who are living here do not want to lose the essence of this city, and those who are arriving come for this very same essence. Meanwhile, we must congratulate all those who were and are now in Fine Arts.
*The quotes from Cossío del Pomar and Carmen Masip were taken from the book «Felipe Cossío del Pomar Cultural Project is in San Miguel de Allende».
