The Dorian Sketchbook of Federico Cantú: Scenes from his Private Life

 

 

Part I: “Dorian”

 

1928

 

After living in Paris since 1924, Federico Cantú Garza – at that time a young painter who used the pseudonym "Dorian"- decides to visit Mexico for a short break in the spring of 1928.

 

After the usual sea voyage, in third class and stopping in Cuba, he finally arrived in Veracruz in May 1928, proceeding by land from the port to Mexico City and arriving exhausted at his house in Calle de San Francisco, Colonia del Valle. In his baggage, made up mainly of clothing, art supplies, books, tools and even a couple of revolvers, the young master treasured Joyce’s Ulysses, Goethe’s Faust, and the well-known work of Oscar Wilde from which he took his artistic name.

 

His mother, the writer María Luisa Garza, "Loreley", who had been writing a series of novels for an entire decade, was pleased by the set of books that her favorite son decided to bring her in appreciation of her unstinting economic support which had allowed him to pay for his stay in Paris.

 

Federico could not have imagined that he was arriving at precisely the moment that his mother’s life was about to turn completely around, leading her to leave Mexico. She intended to restart publication of her magazine entitled “Alma Femenina", which she began to publish around 1922 in San Antonio, Texas, prior to accepting an offer from José Vasconcelos to work in Mexico City.

 

 

 

Federico Cantú, "Dorian", intended to spend the summer in Mexico City before returning to France to continue working in his Montparnasse atelier, knowing that he had to choose between obtaining sufficient resources to continue living the bohemian lifestyle of Paris, or else to immediately accompany "Loreley" in her travels in the United States of America. Unexpectedly, a slight but sudden love interest would make him change his plans and decide to spend the summer with his fiancée in California.

His sudden decision was motivated by his mother’s intention to move to the United States and restart publication of “Alma Femenina", and especially because, just a few hours after returning to Mexico City, he realized that his mother was being courted by a handsome young essayist, poet and painter by the name of Alfonso Fabila Montes de Oca.

 

Adolfo Cantú