Amabilis, J. Manuel.

[NEO-MAYAN AND POSTCOLONIAL ARCHITECTURE] Donde [Where].

Mexico City: self-published (Imp. E. Gomez), 1933. Oblong octavo (16.4 × 23 cm). Original pictorial wrappers; 120, [4] pp. with one diagrammatic illustration on a plate. Wrappers with old stains, affecting first two and final three leaves; else internally clean and about very good. Item #55762

First edition of this disputational essay for a Mexican architecture oriented towards the pre-colonial formal language, which is known today as “Neo-Maya”. Amabili's treatise begins with a polemic against the South American reception of European culture, which he interprets as an internalization of the “claw of the conqueror” and his “contempt for everything ‘indigenous’”. He argues that “today's education and culture are built on an unjust contempt for ancient Mexican civilization and a blind admiration for everything European”. At the same time, he accuses archaeologists and conservationists of museumization: “(...) with the aim of protecting these relics, special departments were created for their preservation, in which the mission was so faithfully fulfilled that they were wrapped in a veritable shroud of oblivion for the national conscience. To preserve these relics, they have isolated them, they have locked them up in their archives, libraries, showcases and premises, so that a silence and a deadly immobility surrounds their work. (...) What do people in the Faculty of Architecture, the School of Fine Arts and other cultural institutions know about these monuments and the civilization that built them?”

Against this, Amabilis advocates that “public buildings (...) show the architecture of our ancestors” by incorporating “all useful or noble elements of past civilizations, especially art, into today's civilization” instead of relegating them to “the mothballs of their archives and showcases”. Above all, anticipating the postmodern critique of functionalism, he opposes the dictum of ornament as a crime: “Of course, bourgeois education, which has always had a suitable subtlety to deceive the people, teaches that art and beauty are superfluous, that they are not necessary for man, although the bourgeoisie has never deprived itself of anything that is not necessary for the poor; for them it is necessary to have a beautiful house, well-kept gardens, etc., and to enjoy beautiful spectacles.” Amabilis sees beauty in architecture not least as a moral necessity, because, he continues, “if people find it difficult to be virtuous”, it is “largely because (...) they are surrounded by so much ugliness. Hordes of emotional bacteria – the ugliness of lines, shapes, colors, and sounds (...) – cause a chronic moral disease that undermines the vitality of the soul.”

See: Diagramming Modernity: Books and Graphic Design in Latin America, 1920–1940 (Archivo Lafuente, 2023), p. 682.

As of June 2026, OCLC lists only four copies worldwide, two of which in North America.

Price: €1,500.00

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