The artist who painted his walls for thirty years

Joaquín Clausell

How many sample pots does it take to decorate one room? Trying to land on the perfect shade of ochre, I started wondering about all the paint that just sits around unused in those tiny tins. Brands like Coat and Lick are beginning to address this with ready-painted swatches, but the best solution I’ve ever seen to leftover paint was discovered in a rooftop studio in Mexico City.

A little less than three blocks south of the Zocalo is the Museo de la Ciudad de México. While this 18th-century baroque former palace is interesting architecturally, the exhibits hold little of note. But it is worth a private tour (free in English or Spanish) to gain access to the former studio of Mexico’s foremost Impressionist Joaquín Clausell.

From the turn of the century, Clausell set up his studio in a room on the roof of the Palace of the Counts of Calimaya, a property inherited by his wife Angela Cervantes. He spent hours alone in here, making small and medium format works, as well as painting onto the walls with oil paint. It is rumoured that Clausell was using up the excess paint from his brushes – a habit that gradually accumulated into these incredible murals over the years.

This trippy, kaleidoscopic space functioned as a playground for his imagination for three decades until his death in 1935. It was here that he improvised unusual characters that paradoxically were absent from his easel work. Not one inch of the walls is left bare: self-portraits, nudes, animals, flora and fauna, religious and fantastical scenes. Perfectly preserved, my favourite is the lion.

Joaquín Clausell

Museo de la Ciudad de México. José María Pino Suárez #30, Col. Centro. Mexico City