Adolfo Best Maugard (1891–1964) was one of the most influential figures in Mexican art education during the post-revolutionary period. A painter, historian, and theoretician, he played a crucial role in shaping the visual language of Mexican modernism through his Método de Dibujo (Drawing Method), which sought to distill the essence of Indigenous visual forms into a structured pedagogical and aesthetic system. Published in 1923 by the Ministry of Public Education (Secretaría de Educación Pública), the method was implemented in public schools across the country and became a foundational tool for artistic instruction during the 1920s and 1930s. It profoundly influenced a generation of artists and contributed to the formation of a modern Mexican visual identity rooted in symbolic abstraction and geometric synthesis.

Best Maugard’s intellectual formation was significantly shaped by his association with José Juan Tablada (1871–1945), a poet, diplomat, and art critic who served as cultural attaché in New York between 1914 and 1918. Tablada played a key role in introducing Theosophical ideas and the writings of Piotr Demianovich Ouspensky to Mexican artists and intellectuals, fostering interest in concepts such as cosmic harmony, the fourth dimension, and spiritual evolution. He also contributed to the diffusion of the work of American Theosophist and architect Claude Fayette Bragdon, particularly The Beautiful Necessity: Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture (1910), which proposed a theory of design rooted in sacred geometry and universal proportion. Bragdon’s subsequent A Primer of Higher Space: The Fourth Dimension (1913) developed these ideas further under the influence of Ouspensky, providing a conceptual framework that resonated with Best Maugard’s own interest in geometry, symbolism, and the spiritual foundations of form.

The Drawing Method: A Nationalist and Esoteric Approach to Art Education 

In 1923, while serving as head of the National Department of Artistic Education, Best Maugard developed his Drawing Method, a system designed to introduce Mexican children to a structured artistic language grounded in Indigenous decorative traditions. Based on the analysis of over 2,000 examples of pre-Hispanic pottery, textiles, and murals, he identified seven fundamental geometric elements—the straight line, zigzag, wavy line, half-circle, full circle, ‘S’ curve, and spiral—which, when combined, could generate all visual forms.

These seven motifs were not only pedagogical tools but also reflected a deeper esoteric framework. Best Maugard aligned these forms with the Theosophical concept of a septenary structure—the belief that both the cosmos and the human being are organized into sevenfold systems of development and expression. This symbolic system echoed the Theosophical vision of a universal, primordial wisdom shared across ancient civilizations.

By reducing visual language to these elemental forms, Best Maugard sought to reveal the continuity between Mexico’s Indigenous past and its modern cultural project. His method merged nationalist pedagogy with spiritualist cosmology, offering a model of artistic education that was both accessible and grounded in esoteric principles. Implemented nationwide, the method became one of the most influential educational models of the post-revolutionary period, shaping the early visual sensibilities of a generation of Mexican artists.