The Worthy Poet’s Grocery

Roberto Montenegro is known as one of the Mexican artists who most energetically advocated folk and pre-Columbian motifs in art from his country both during the revolution and after. A muralist, set designer, and lithographer in addition to an easel painter, Montenegro arrived in Spain in 1905 thanks to a fellowship from the Mexican government to study at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. He spent a number of years moving back and forth between Mexico and Europe, and while in Paris he came into contact with the languages of the avant-garde. He hoped to leave “the Old World” when World War I broke out, but he was not able to get out of Mallorca, where he ended up meeting Pablo Picasso. His versatile work evidences his varied sources of inspiration and the many themes and movements he explored, from surrealism to abstraction. The dream-like quality of "L’épicerie du bon poète" is undeniable; a bride, a mannequin, an ancient sculpture, and a fetus in formaldehyde are some of the figures brought together on the façade of a macabre fine grocery. The lyre and laurel wreath—attributes of the god Apollo, associated with poetry, perfection, and harmony—offered as rent make the painting even more suggestive.