This dramatic ad was shot in Dallas. That is Antonio Pineda in the foreground with an intricately designed knife driven into the table on which he rests his arm. The model wears Pineda body art.
:Antonio Pineda's Modernist jewelry has been known to drive men to extremes. Many years ago, the Mexican actor/director Emilio "Indio" Fernandez so wanted to put a ring from Pineda's private collection on actress Maria Felix's finger that he smashed his fist through a glass display case. When the great man's hand emerged cut and bleeding, Pineda recounts, "It was too late for me to tell him the ring was not for sale."
Pineda, who at 89 laughingly related the story, is perhaps the most enduring of the Taxco silver masters influenced by the American expatriate architect, designer and professor William Spratling.
In an unspoken ideological liaison with artists like Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros and silver designers Spratling, Frederick Davis, Hector Aguilar and Jorge "Chato" Castillo, Sigi Pineda and Antonio Pineda all worked in a uniquely Mexican Modernist form heavily peppered with Mexican nationalism. They also ushered in Mexico's silver renaissance.
The Taxco School, as the group was known (and Taxquenos
,
as they called themselves), was born in the 1930s, flourished in the 1940s and 1950s and did not decline until well into mid-century. Antonio Pineda's career remained strong through the 1970s.
In its heyday, Taxco was the high-end shopping destination for Hollywood stars, heads of state and international socialites. While they may have been captivated by the avant-garde scene that flourished in the cafes of Taxco's cobblestone lanes, the real draw was extraordinary jewelry impeccably executed in local tallers (workshops).
This bullet-cuff with amethysts and silver cones was inspired by an image of World War II. It bears the Antonio Crown hallmark, circa 1953.
While in Taxco, buyers were wined, dined and invited to luxuriate in comfortable reception rooms equipped with private bars. They were then beguiled by a parade of silver jewels embellished with amethysts, obsidian, onyx, jade and turquoise. Pineda went so far as to entice vanities with silver jewelry set with pearls.
The maestro's work evolved from an early post-Mexican Revolutionary style influenced by a variety of themes that surrounded him, including everything from pre-Colombian art to Art Deco to the sleek lines of abstraction. Works that were in demand at mid-century are today highly collectible and the subject of an exhibition titled "Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda" on view at University of California, Los Angeles' (UCLA) Fowler Museum through March 15.
The exhibition draws heavily on anthropologist Gobi Stromberg's seminal work on the Taxco School. More than 250 silver pieces from the collections of Cindy Tietz and Stuart Hodosh are on view. Viewers also have the added advantage of seeing and hearing Pineda recount, through videos, how his inspirations and manner of working came about.
To Pineda, "Silver is like a woman. It's white, it's ductile, an invitation to be touched, to be modeled, to be made immortal by the artist." Clearly, the artist has not lost any of the charm that, as a younger man with a pencil mustache, good looks and American-style ambition, helped catapult him to the top of his game.
