Echániz, Guillermo M., 1900–1965

Guillermo M. Echániz (1900–1965) was a bookseller and antiquarian based in Mexico City, and one of Earl Stendahl’s first major suppliers of pre-Hispanic art. Echániz married Juliette (“Julieta”) Latremouille (1905–1985) in Detroit in 1924, and both of their children were born there before the close of the decade.

While Echániz’s own expansive collection of pre-Hispanic objects elicited both admiration and condemnation during his lifetime, today he is best known internationally for the facsimiles of codices (pre- and post-Conquest Mexican manuscripts) that he produced and sold out of his Librería Anticuaria Echániz, starting from its first location at Donceles 12 in Mexico City’s historic center. This address also hosted the first iteration of Echániz’s Museo de Artes Gráficas, which contained a veritable timeline of graphic arts materials, from pre-Hispanic clay seals and stamps, to a colonial-era printing press, to engravings by José Guadalupe Posada. Echániz’s Librería and Museo expanded exponentially after 1941 when he acquired a new property at Mar Arafura 8 in Popotla. Its high blue walls would come to enclose a family home with museum-like galleries and an impressive outdoor display garden. In addition to his business sense and willingness to illicitly export pre-Hispanic objects from Mexico to the United States, it was perhaps Echániz’s command of English and experience in the U.S. that made him so comfortable with this binational partnership.

Guillermo Echaniz is little known to contemporary scholars and curators of pre-Hispanic art, aside from a few mentions and a small number of objects. His self-fashioned public persona, however, would become that of a discerning collector positioned at the crossroads of scientific research, popular interest, and the promotion of pre-Hispanic art and mexicanidad. At the root of his beliefs around collecting in the Mexican context was the outsize importance of private collectors and collections in a country whose government, he alleged, could not properly protect the nation’s archaeological treasures nor effectively communicate their enormous value, whether cultural or commercial, to the Mexican people; and he argued that Mexico’s Ley de Protección y Conservación de Monumentos Arqueológicos e Históricos, which placed limits on the acquisition and commerce of pre-Hispanic objects, was both unconstitutional and arbitrary. Still, Echániz could not escape criticism in the Mexican press, particularly over the mural taken from the Tetitla compound in Teotihuacan that he sold to Earl Stendahl, who then sold it to Robert Woods Bliss. This criticism eventually translated into concern that Echániz’s own extant private collection would be dispersed and sold abroad.

In the mid 1960s, with the construction and opening of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Chapultepec, the Mexican government increased its efforts to acquire private collections via both purchases and donations. Many collectors and dealers—including those who saw stricter regulation of the market on the horizon, or sought public recognition (or pardon) for their collecting activities—viewed this escalation in pressure to turn over their inventory as an opportunity. Echániz himself was reportedly negotiating the sale of his collection to the Mexican government c. 1964, with the stipulation that it carry his name, but this deal was never realized.

Echániz died in early November 1965, and by the end of May 1966, his wife Julieta was selling pieces on consignment to a dealer in New York. It is not currently known how many other U.S. dealers and collectors she approached, or how many of the objects were bought by the Stendahl family, whose patriarch died less than 7 months after Echániz. The Museo de Artes Gráficas was still functioning on Mar Arafura in August of 1984, the same year that Julieta transferred at least part of its extant collection to INAH, which INAH placed in storage at the Museo Fuerte de Ulúa, Veracruz. A large part of Echániz’s Museo de Artes Gráficas is currently owned by the Fundación Armando Birlain, whose namesake bought the collection from Julieta c. 1975, and has maintained it in its own Museo Nacional de Artes Gráficas since 1977. It is likely, however, that many of the pre-Hispanic objects in Echániz’s original collection have long been dispersed, both within Mexico and abroad.