John Nevin
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by Alberto Lenz

John Nevin (1922-2003) was born in Providence, Rhode Island. A veteran of World War II, postwar he moved to Marfil, a residential area outside of Guanajuato City, where he became a well known painter, a key figure in the art scene of the city.

A remarkable artist, with a very original realistic vision, he painted in tempera, a medieval technique that he revived in his works.

Nevin was a generous but sullen man, who lived locked up in his painter's studio. The doorbell of his house had a large DO NOT DISTURB! sign that kept potential visitors away. We were, however, very good friends. In fact, I am the proud owner of the only portrait he made of a child in his whole career, that of my daughter Ana, who was five or six-years-old at the time.

Ana Lenz
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Endowed with a charming little garden with a cantera fountain in its center, Nevin's house was a heaven of peace, completely isolated from the world. We few friends who entered knew that we were entering a sacred space, that this was a rare privilege that, for some undiscovered reason, John granted us.

At that time, he had three important loves in his life: his Mexican wife Lila, his black cat called Negrita and La Bufa, the magnificent mountain that overlooks the city of Guanajuato. Among the memories that haunted him from time to time, often after drinking some tequilas, were his war days as a pilot aboard a B52 over Germany, and a striptease dancer with whom he had once lived in the slums of Manhattan.

Lila
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Lila, his Mexican wife, was his companion in the final part of his life. A lawyer by profession, she was known in the artistic world of Guanajuato for having been the Director of the Diego Rivera Museum.

Lila was famous because she threw the best opening parties for the exhibitions she presented in the museum. Those openings were attended by the entire art world of Guanajuato of that time. They were an account of who was who in the city's art scene.

At those openings, I remember meeting some notable local artists, like Paco Patlán, the very talented Japanese-style engraver, leader of the gay community, and Jesús Gallardo, a remarkable landscape artist, who had a lot of collectors among the rich people of León. Paco Patlán and Jesús Gallardo were both teachers at the University of Guanajuato and hated each other, with Gallardo calling Paco "la Loca Patlana". But at the parties organized by Lila, under the mariachi music and the tequilas, the two always ended up being very good friends.

At these parties, I also met Juan Ibañez, a famous man of theater and cinema who gained international renown for having written and directed Los Caifanes, an iconic film of Mexican cinema, one of the first films to show the huge gap between rich and poor people in Mexican society.

John Nevin never attended the openings of his wife's exhibitions. He rejected this type of events around art. He thought they turned artistic creation into a "pachanga" that serious artists should avoid. For this reason, he proposed that the artists, instead of appearing in person at the openings, should send a full-body photograph, naked if possible.

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Alberto Lenz is an artist living in San Miguel de Allende dedicated to sculpture, painting and architecture. Recently, he is also working on the design of jewelry and textiles, under his XIDO-Estudio brand.

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