The History of Art in San Miguel de Allende: Ancient ceramics

Published December 20, 2022

By Natalie Taylor

When speaking of the legacy of art, we assume it is art created by artists, whose body of work has been historically recognized. But what about artwork which does not have a record of the individual who did it, but whose excellent artistic output warrants recognition? This is the case for most of the artistic works of indigenous people of America, prior to the arrival of the Europeans. In Mexico, we refer to this as the pre-Hispanic period.

A new collection of artifacts is so beautifully executed that they ought to be recognized as part of a nation’s artistic body of work. They predate the arrival of the Spanish, and are the works of unknown, indigenous people. We are fortunate to have this in San Miguel de Allende, in a comprehensive museum collection in the Izcuinapan Room of the Allende Art Museum. What makes these works significant, is that they are all from the San Miguel area, some older than 2,500 years—two millennia before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores.

The man responsible for this collection is Miguel Malo Zozaya (1906-1972), a San Miguel resident, whose ancestors were among the first Spaniards to populate our city. Starting in the early 1950s, Malo began the scientific and investigative work to recover the rich archeological history of the Laja River area. He worked closely with archeologists, collecting and preserving items he found through his own field work, and that of others. In 1964, he started exhibiting these objects, naming his collection Izcuinapan, the Nahuatl name for the San Miguel region.

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