Mathias Goeritz

B: Operating Theatre from ABC Hospital, Mexico City

circa 1976

Mathias Goeritz was a German painter and sculptor who worked mainly in Mexico. He was born on April 4, 1915 in Danzig, studied philosophy and art history in Berlin, and then went to a craft school. Due to his Jewish origin, he went into exile during the National Socialist regime.

In 1948, during his stay in Spain, Goeritz founded the Altamira School of Arts. After his stays in Morocco and Spain, he went to Mexico in 1949. The collective met there and began their first plastic works. By order of Daniel Mont, he began in 1952 with the construction of the experimental museum El Eco in Mexico City. Goeritz later taught plastic arts at the University of Guadalajara in Jalisco and designed reliefs and concrete and steel sculptures in the D.F. and its surroundings. He was also advisor and director of a project for the team of the Olympic Games of October 1968. The sculptor's best-known work is the Satellite Towers, which were built in cooperation with Barragán on the outskirts, in the north of the city. The red and triangular towers, built in 1957, adorn the entrance to the Ciudad de Satélite neighborhood on the road to Querétaro. The towers symbolize the birth of the Satellite City, a colony that in the 1960s was inhabited mainly by wealthy people. Goeritz passed away on August 4, 1990, in Mexico City.

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