During the heady days that followed the Mexican revolution, the air was filled with fervent nationalism. The euphoria of new beginnings brought out the best in creative vision from talent that fed on this intoxicating energy. From the ranks of this creative elite came Adolfo Best Maugard, his imprint on Mexican culture more profound than that of many of the more talented painters who were his contemporaries.

Best Maugard was born in Mexico City in 1881, just in time to be of age when the old regime of Porfirio Diaz crumbled and Alvaro Obregon was elected president. And just in time to be part of the group of Mexican intellectuals in search of a national identity. A contemporary and colleague of such great artists as Diego Rivera, Miguel Covarrubias, Carlos Merida, Rufino Tamayo and Roberto Montenegro, he was in the front lines of those looking to bring forward the rich cultural heritage of Mexico's pre-colonial past. Each of these artists went on to become far greater painters than Best Maugard, but each of them was influenced by his discoveries and subsequent re-definition of the "rules" of art.

Unlike his colleagues, he had a background that would set him apart. As a young man, he was commissioned by the famous anthropologist Franz Boas to do illustrations of pre-Hispanic materials being excavated from the Valley of Mexico. Many of the pieces dated as far back as 2,000 years ago. Best Maugard painstakingly copied thousands of these pre-Columbian decorative pieces which the ancient tribes of the Valley of Mexico had used to adorn their households and ritual objects.

In the process, he became an expert on decorative motifs. Studying the pieces very carefully, Best Maugard began to grasp the linear elements that constituted indigenous decorative art. He discovered there were repetitions of certain basic forms that he believed could be reduced to seven elements.

Feeling he was on to something, he explored further, looking at indigenous artifacts outside the Anahuac (Valley of Mexico) region and found there was a consistency in these basic elements. Not only the pre-Columbian work had these elements, but the contemporary popular arts contained the same elements as the ancient work - even the brightly colored pulqueria paintings that were often ridiculed. Later, he went to Europe to study early decorative art in European museums and found the same characteristics. He realized they were present in all primitive art.

Between 1910 and 1920, while researching the decorative traditions of various countries and eras, Best Maugard was also teaching drawing in several public schools. He used the opportunity to put his developing theories into practice. This was the genesis of the Best Maugard method.

On a trip to the Yucatan in 1921 he could already see the results of his pedagogical method. A subsequent trip to Merida to introduce his ideas again produced excellent results.

When Jose Vasconcelos became Secretary of Public Education, he appointed Best Maugard director of the Drawing and Handicraft Department, and in 1922 the "Best System" was adopted by the state schools of the Federal District. When his book, Manuales y Tratados: Metodo de dibujo: tradition, resurgimiento y evolucion del arte mexicano (Manual of Drawing: Tradition, Renaissance and Evolution of Mexican Art), was published in 1923, 200,000 children were given a copy free of charge to be used as a text book.

From his studies on primitive decorative art, Best Maugard observed that all primitive peoples used the same forms of representation to depict natural phenomena. He concluded that "a latent seed of art was buried in the human subconscious waiting to be awakened", and he set out to pinpoint what the essential forms were which sprang spontaneously from deep within the human spirit.

He uncovered seven elements: point and straight line, spiral, circle, semicircle or arc, wavy line, "s" shape, and zigzag - nature being the ultimate source of all these elements. These geometric forms combine and mix to make all things imaginable that could be produced. In his book, A Method for Creativity, he refers to the seven elements as building blocks that, when combined can, imbue the whole with meaning, emotion and beauty. He uses as an analogy the seven notes in the musical scale.

When the "Best Method" became an official part of the school curriculum, the academic traditionalists were enraged. They declared war, . . .

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