José Juan Tablada

José Juan Tablada (April 3, 1871 – August 2, 1945) was a Mexican poet, art critic and, for a brief period, diplomat. A pioneer of oriental studies, and champion of Mexican art, he spent a good portion of his life outside his country. As a poet, his work spans from the fin-de-siècle style to avant-garde experimentalism; he was especially an early haiku pioneer.

Tablada was born in Mexico City and at first worked for the national railways. In 1890, aged 19, he began contributing to magazines and newspapers as a journalist, essayist and poet. In 1894 his rhythmic and intricate poem "Onix" brought him renown. Florilegio, his first collection of poetry, was published in 1899 and established him as one of Mexico's pioneer 'modernists', although at that period such writing approximated the style of the French decadent movement.

From early on, he became interested in Japanese aesthetics and travelled to Japan for some months in 1900. This left its influence on his work and culminated in a book on the artist Hiroshige (1914) and a general work, En el país del sol (In the land of the sun, 1919). The latter was made up of a selection of his articles on Japanese subjects over the years, in particular those arising from his 1900 visit. In addition he had brought back a large collection of ukiyo-e prints that are now in the National Library of Mexico.

During the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution, Tablada spent time in Paris and then in New York City until he was appointed a cultural secretary in the Foreign Service in 1918, serving in Bogota, Caracas, and Quito. Unable to adapt to the altitude of the last, he resigned and thereafter spent much of his time in New York until 1935. There he ran a bookshop and founded the magazine Mexican Art and Life. At this period he was championing Mexican art, being among the first to draw attention to the art of the Pre-Columbian period, but also supporting the modernist painters José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera.

...
Wikipedia