Duncan Fallowell

What’s to become of Pedro Friedeberg’s letters?

Duncan Fallowell has delighted for many years in the letters of his Mexican friend Pedro Friedeberg, but wonders what on earth to do with them

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issue 11 April 2015

The year 2015 has been designated one of Anglo-Mexican amity, with celebrations planned in both countries by both governments. But it looks as though one name will be missing from the list: Pedro Friedeberg’s. ‘Who?’ you may ask. Well, in 1982 I was in Mexico City to interview Gabriel García Márquez after he’d won the Nobel Prize for Literature. At a party given by a Mexican art-collector, I noticed several zany pictures on the wall. ‘They’re all by Pedro Friedeberg, my favourite Mexican artist,’ said the collector. I stared at one large framed square after another, at pictures in which the Old World and the New seemed conjoined in a frantic, electrified marriage.

The following week the Mexican currency collapsed. As I was walking past a gallery in the Zona Rosa, a painting in the window arrested me. Strangely attired maidens floated in a room which had a 19th-century look — until I peered more closely and saw that its wallpaper was patterned with tiny repetitions of E=mc2.

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