Exhibition to commemorate half a century of the Payment in Kind program decree

▲ Hugo B. Margáin reviews, along with David Alfaro Siqueiros and Raúl Anguiano, a work by Diego Rivera known as Lucila and the Judases , delivered as payment in kind to cover his tax obligations. Photo Images taken from the book SHCP Art Museum

Merry MacMasters

La Jornada Newspaper, Wednesday, May 7, 2025, p. 2

The Payment in Kind program of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) allows artists to cover their tax obligations by donating their works. It is an innovative tax mechanism, unique in its kind. This program has created a representative collection of modern and contemporary art in the country.

This year marks the half-century since the presidential decree authorizing the SHCP (Ministry of Public Works and Public Works) to accept personal income tax payments from artists who independently produce works of fine art, directly accruing from such activity, on their works . To commemorate the milestone, the institution is preparing a yet-to-be-dated exhibition of both documentary and artwork for the SHCP Art Museum.

The program's origins date back to 1957, when a group of artists, led by David Alfaro Siqueiros, asked the then Director of the Income Tax Service, Hugo B. Margáin, for the option of paying their taxes through their own artwork. In this regard, the official wrote in 1982 about the conversation with the painter and muralist in which "the idea of ​​allowing artists to pay their taxes through works of art was conceived."

“Siqueiros had organized a group of painters, and one of them had had his property seized for failure to pay the taxes derived from his income. Siqueiros vehemently argued that a painter doesn't understand accounting or the complications established by tax laws. 'All we have,' he told me, 'are paintings, and if you want, we can pay our obligations to the government by delivering a painting.' 'I don't think it's a bad idea,' I replied. 'We could, through this system, collect a significant collection of contemporary art, and we would establish it in a museum specially designed for the purpose. I'm sure I can count on the support of businessmen and bankers for the construction of the museum.'

The proposal was approved by the then secretary, Antonio Carrillo Flores, and the artists' response was enthusiastic. According to Margáin, Diego Rivera donated his painting The Artist's Studio and, shortly afterward, three works corresponding to the final months of his life (he died on November 24, 1957): The Worker Reconstructionist of Warsaw , Urban Landscape , and Breaking the Ice in Bratislava. Rivera's contribution actually represented a donation, as he had no debts.

Rufino Tamayo submitted his painting The Photogenic Venus , while Adolfo Best Maugard sent his painting Zapata . Other artists such as Raúl Anguiano, Joaquín Martínez Navarrete, and José Chávez Morado, among many others, made similar contributions.

Success continued to grow. Margáin notes: “The innovative process spread to engravers and sculptors, and was so notable that cultured countries in Europe came to photograph the submitted works, initially exhibited in the SHCP's Hall of Coats of Arms, and later in the Empress's Chapel. Thus, the beginnings of an excellent museum of contemporary Mexican art were formed.”

▲ Emiliano Zapata , oil on canvas by Adolfo Best Maugard, part of the SHCP Heritage Collection. Photo: Images taken from the SHCP Art Museum book.

From a distance, the public official assessed the program's results: The artists' in-kind contribution should also be considered a stimulus to the contemporary national artistic movement. From the perspective of national interests, he can assert that this form of payment in kind, far from harming the state's economic interests, actually enriched it. All the works received then are now worth much more than what the artists owed the treasury .

The Payment in Kind program was formalized by a presidential decree published on March 6, 1975, in the Official Gazette . Among the criteria, it was considered that protecting and increasing the assets and values ​​that constitute the cultural heritage of the Nation and making them accessible to the community constitutes one of the purposes of the social educational function . To this end, it is advisable for the State to acquire a representative sample of the visual arts, works of Mexican or foreign authors who obtain taxable income from their artistic activity in the country . In order to make the works acquired by the State accessible to the community, they must be exhibited in halls or museums frequented by the general public and exhibited abroad as examples of the national artistic creation of our time .

Although the program's collection consists primarily of painting and sculpture, it has been modified to modernize its operation. It now includes formats such as photography, installation, sound art, and digital art.

Rigorous selection by Vicente Rojo

Because the collection is the calling card for the art produced in the country, artists enrolled in the program strive to submit their best work. One example is Vicente Rojo (1932-2021). The painter, engraver, and sculptor submitted his first work to the program in 1976, and not only remained active in the program until his final days, but also always selected his best pieces, Nadia Hernández Serrano, director of collections control at the General Directorate of the Conservatorship of the National Palace and Cultural Heritage of the SHCP, told La Jornada in 2021.

We know that the master was a very disciplined artist, committed to his work, and also to maintaining very high standards in terms of his creation , said Hernández Serrano on the occasion of the exhibition A Trajectory, a Collection: Vicente Rojo , mounted at the Centro Cultural Estación Indianilla. The 48 pieces that the artist gave to the program over the years are organized from seven of the series that the artist worked on throughout his life: Signs , Denials , Codices , Memories , Mexico under the Rain , Scenarios and Volcanoes .

▲ One of the pieces Manuel Felguérez created by giving a computer artificial sensitivity. Photo courtesy of the Academy of Arts

Merry MacMasters

La Jornada Newspaper, Wednesday, May 7, 2025, p. 3

In 1975, with a Guggenheim Fellowship under his belt and a letter as a visiting professor at Harvard University, the painter and sculptor Manuel Felguérez (1928-2020), in collaboration with the Colombian mathematician Mayer Sasson, embarked on a pioneering research project in his artistic career. During his stay at the institution in Massachusetts, the Zacatecas-born artist worked on the project The Aesthetic Machine in a computer lab, with the aim of exploring the connections between art and science through a series of numerically developed premises.

The results, published in a book in 1983, showcased a series of paintings and sculptures derived from this exercise. Some of these works were included in the collection of the Academy of Arts, an institution that provided works for the exhibition Manuel Felguérez: An Aesthetic Machine , mounted in the gallery bearing his name in the General Rector's Office of the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM).

Felguérez's project involved taking advantage of the large computers Harvard had in its computer lab. At the time, processors were powered by punch cards, recalled Louise Noelle, academic secretary of the Academy of Arts, at the opening ceremony.

Aesthetic judgments

In the introduction the artist wrote for the book published by the Institute for Aesthetic Research, he noted: "As is well known, a computer can be endowed with artificial intelligence, allowing it to make intelligent decisions. Now, if in this case, in the process of feeding the device, the majority of the commands correspond to aesthetic judgments, that is, decisions of emotional origin, we can affirm that it was possible to endow the computer with artificial sensitivity, thus creating the Aesthetic Machine ."

The more than 200 sketches produced by the computer were a source of inspiration for many of the artist's works. In them, circles, triangles, and rectangles constitute his visual language. The UAM exhibition, which was previously displayed at the Anthropology Museum in Xalapa, is comprised of eight small-format sculptures from the series The Aesthetic Machine , made of lacquered metal in various colors between 1975 and 1976, in addition to eight contemporary pieces in which the complex forms derive from the fusion of metal and paint. The multiplicity and abundance of designs, an apparent contradiction with the purity of the simple geometric forms in sober tones, achieve a strong visual impact with results of great aesthetic value that allow a close-up analysis of a fundamental moment in Felguérez's artistic production. His avant-garde vocation, multidisciplinary logic, and spirit of constant inquiry made him not only a pioneer in Mexico in computer image production, but also of abstract art in the country and one of the key figures in the development of contemporary art.

For Felguérez, the work carried out in the Harvard University laboratory represented an expansion of his language and his explorations of geometric abstraction through the use of technology and a marked interest in the relationship between art and science; that is, a dialogue between man and machine with a purpose beyond the functional.

Manuel Felguérez: An Aesthetic Machine will remain until August 1st at the Manuel Felguérez Gallery of the General Rector's Office of the UAM (Prolongación Canal de Miramontes 3855, Ex Hacienda San Juan de Dios neighborhood, Tlalpan Municipality) with hours of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.