The Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City a pyramid-shaped structure of volcanic stone was
intended to be the final mansion of Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo. Today it houses
Rivera's vast collection of pre-Columbian art. Unlike typical museums the building's galleries
resemble religious or ceremonial chambers and the corridors are dramatic and cavernous. In
2022 artist Robert Janitz (b. 1962 in Alsfeld Germany) who had recently moved to Mexico City
from New York was invited to exhibit his work at Anahuacalli. This catalog documents this
extraordinary dialogue between pre-Hispanic and contemporary aesthetics. As an outsider Janitz
was free to respond to what he found compelling at Anahuacalli: the colors the textures the
visionary architecture. Throughout the museum's three floors Janitz installed large-scale
paintings on the walls even the ceiling and floor to amplify and distort Rivera's almost
ubiquitous decorative program. His paintings of tubular structures halfway between hieroglyphs
and shapes were spotlit against the heavy dark stone walls giving them a jewel-like
luminosity and creating an almost metaphysical and spiritual experience. Conceptually and
chromatically Anahuacalli seemed the perfect home for Janitz's extravagantly colored
silhouettes.
