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UNAM Library Mosaic

ProMax

Juan O'Gorman covered four windowless facades of UNAM's Biblioteca Central — some 4,000 m² — in natural stone. He refused paint: outdoors, paint fails. Instead he drove around Mexico collecting ten to twelve colours of rock from Guerrero, Guanajuato, Hidalgo and Zacatecas, sorted it by colour, and set the mural in one-square-metre panels.

The result reads flat, dry and matte from a hundred metres. This system inherits that discipline. Colour comes from stone, not from light. Blocks tessellate and butt edge to edge along a mortar hairline. Nothing glows, nothing gradients, and the single blue on screen is glass, because no stone gave him one.

Learn more about the UNAM Library Mosaic style

  • OriginCiudad Universitaria, Mexico City (Pedregal lava field)
  • Periodmural executed 1950–1956; building opened 5 April 1956; UNESCO World Heritage 2007
  • DesignerJuan O'Gorman · Gustavo Saavedra · Juan Martínez de Velasco
  • MovementsMexican modernism · integración plástica · muralismo

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