A New Cartier Exhibition Explores The Legacy Of Their Most Exuberant Customer — Mexican Icon Maria Felix

“Maria Felix was the ideal personality to work alongside Cartier to create jewelry that was completely innovative and new,” says curator Ana Elena Mallet – “she is still a very important icon in Mexico, and having a woman actress as a key part of the discourse in this exhibition was important.” This exhibition, curated by Mallet at the Museo Jumex in Mexico City – Cartier Design: A Living Legacy – explores the rich history of Cartier design through 160 items ranging from 1847 to present day, but with a fresh added layer of research – a never before seen focus on the large jewelry collection of Felix. “Maria brought a huge amount of creative energy to Cartier,” Mallet says, “I really want other generations to understand and be curious about this woman and her legacy. Not only her jewels and her style, but to also know her film career and all she achieved as a woman at the time.”

Spanning over a century of the brand’s creativity, the exhibition is one of the largest retrospectives in Cartier’s history – and it’s first in Mexico for 20 years. The show spotlights key pieces in the Cartier Collection, an archive initiative founded in 1973 and dedicated to celebrating the rarest and most dynamic Cartier designs in the world since the brand was founded in 1847. With its location in Mexico City, Cartier and Mallet were adamant that the exhibition would have a focus on Mexico – the rich relationship between Felix and the brand provided the perfect opportunity to explore Cartier’s part in modern design, and how forward thinking the brand has been in it’s art practice. “I wanted to bring my background in design to the table and highlight how the Cartier brothers were leaders in design, from art deco to abstraction, the latter of which they were translating into their designs years before it became a modern art movement,” Mallet says.

For Mexican Mallet, curating this show came with an emotional connection. “I do remember Maria Felix being alive during my lifetime,” she says, “and it was very important for me to bring her legacy as a radical woman into the light for a new generation.”

Born in Álamos in north Mexico in 1914, Maria Felix was an actress and singer who became prolific in the Latin American film industry in the 1940s and 1950s for her ability to rally against the social norms for Mexican women at the time. Playing a range of roles from femme fatale to widow, she made over 45 films and garnered a global audience that inspired directors and creatives, including Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Crucially, she never accepted the multiple Hollywood roles that would have led to her being typecast as merely a “latina”, a predicament many Latin actresses still find themselves in.

This was a woman who knew the delicate balance in delivering diva through fine jewelry. Working with Cartier largely in the 1960s and 1970s, alongside the brand Felix created timepieces, necklaces, belts and bracelets that infused her appetite for full-throttle living with Cartier’s composure and restraint. Felix never failed to live up to her fabled reputation, once attending a consultation with Cartier to design the now famous Crocodile Necklace (1975), she arrived with a baby crocodile, supposedly to inspire the necklace.

The exhibition has been designed by the studio of Mexican architect Frida Escobedo, who masterminded the Serpentine Pavilion in 2018. Like her iteration of the yearly British installation in Kensington Gardens, Escobedo has created a stark but warm space, made in collaboration with local artisans, including the Mexico City studio Taller Tornel, who developed just under 1000 curved concrete bricks to create a cave-like feel in the exhibition space. Going against the grain is not new for Escobedo, and she approached the show with the same verve she did the Serpentine Pavillion – “We wanted to do something that would express this idea of manufacturing and the unique process of doing things by hand in Mexico” she says, adding that she wanted the walls of the exhibition to have a textural feel – “we wanted to present something that resembled the topographical lines of sediment.” The effect is far from that of a stark, white walled exhibition space, but instead offers a process of discovery and exploration.

Like Mallet, Escobedo was inspired by the legacy of Felix. “I think the exhibition shows how women have really shifted the way that we understand jewelry,” she says – “Maria was so innovative. I think she’s a very important figure in the design world and having her work on show in Mexico feels significant.” Escobedo’s father was a watchmaker, and working on the exhibition triggered warm memories of him explaining to her the intricacies of how watches worked. “He had a huge respect for Cartier,” she says, “he knew the brand inside and out.”

Escobedo’s rooms play a minimalist host to a buzzy array of jewelry movements, from art deco and orientalism, to modernism and abstraction. In a room dedicated to Cartier’s timepieces Wearing Beauty and Measuring Time, on show are a collection of La Dona Cartier watches, inspired by Felix’s nickname ‘La Dona’ (the lady, in English). The actress was one of only two people who have ever had a watch collection named after them by Cartier. Shown alongside subversive timepiece design including the 1990 melting Crash wrist watch, it’s clear how much Felix’s diva status impacted the creativity of her collaborators at Cartier, and how willing Cartier have been to innovate. “Maria was an incomparable beauty with talent, ambition, intelligence, drive, and a social conscience ” says Walter López Rivera, president of the Maria Felix Estate – “she choose to use her fame in uniquely creative ways, such as her Cartier jewelry creations.”

Two trophy pieces in the show — a diamond encrusted life size snake necklace made in 1968 with Felix, along with a necklace featuring two baby crocodiles, the result of Felix’s animal-accompanied consultation with Cartier in 1975, show how powerful Felix’s commitment representing Mexico was. “The snake and crocodile pieces are like sculptures, I think Cartier went one step forward with them to create three dimensional articulated pieces that feel like art” Mallet says. “They also made sure that the crocodile necklace could be worn as two brooches, the snake can be worn in multiple ways, not just as a necklace.”

The dynamic relationship between Cartier and Felix provides fresh new context to the other pieces on show in the exhibition. Next to a necklace inspired by a baby wild animal, Cartier’s 1925 Tutti Frutti strap bracelet and 1935 Pyramid Brooch appear ahead of their time in their avant-garde approach to colour, cut and versatility – many Cartier pieces are designed to be worn in multiple ways, such as a necklace with a detachable pendant that becomes a brooch.

Mallet is keen to point out another important female presence that shaped Cartier, Jeanne Toussaint, a designer who worked for Cartier for over 40 years until 1970. During this time, “she created many quietly groundbreaking pieces” says Mallet, as well as championing the brand’s enduring Panthere figure. It was during Toussaint’s tenure at Cartier that some of their most innovative use of materials took place, and Mallet was keen to highlight that. During her curatorial process, she spotted significant experimentation in the materials Cartier use. “I saw a lot of innovation in Cartier’s use of materials – the use of platinum crystal rock, for example, and I wanted to highlight that,” Mallet says.

After scouring the Cartier Collection, her aim was to explore how groundbreaking Cartier have been in their approach to not only jewellery, but design too. “Cartier have long been part of the artistic avant garde,” Mallet says — “showcasing these works alongside Felix’s offbeat collection offered the perfect opportunity to highlight the power of jewelry design in the wider design field.” Mallet hopes that the exhibition extends Felix’s reputation beyond Mexico – “her story is one that still resonates today, and slowly, younger global generations are discovering her.”

Cartier Design: A Living Legacy runs until 14 May at Museo Jumex.