Mérida is best known for canvas and mural work, the latter including elements such as glass and ceramic mosaic on major constructions in the 1950s and 1960s.

His early trips in the 1920s and 1930s put him in touch with both avant garde movements in Europe as well as noted Latin American artists, especially those from Mexico.

[9] Mérida was one of a number of artists such as Diego Rivera and Gerardo Murillo who became committed to promoting the handcrafts and folk art of Mexico and Central America, with a particular interest in those of Guatemala, often featuring Mayan textiles or elements in their decoration in his artwork.

At age nineteen, he approached Catalan artist and writer Jaime Sabartés, who helped Mérida organize his first individual exhibition at the offices of the El Economista newspaper in Guatemala City in 1910.

[1][5] As there was little opportunity for artists in Guatemala, in 1910, Mérida traveled to Paris with a friend named Carlos Valenti on a German cargo ship.

[8] For unknown reasons, his traveling companion committed suicide in his studio, which affected Mérida deeply and temporarily losing interest in art.

There he joined a group called the Renacimiento Mexicano (Mexican Renaissance) and then worked with Diego Rivera as an assistant at the Bolivar Amphitheater (San Ildefonso College) along with Jean Charlot, Amado de la Cueva, and Xavier Guerrero.

[1][8] He also painted Caperucita roja y los cuatro elementos at the children’s library of the Secretariat of Public Education in the 1920s.

[4] In the late 1940s, he worked on murals again, at the Secretaria de Rucursos Hidraulicos and the children’s area of the Miguel Alemán housing complex with Mario Pani.

A monument to the Juarez project was created by a student of Mérida, Alfonso Soto Soria, at the Fuentes Brotantes housing complex in the south of Mexico City using the plans of the original work.

[9] Other projects of this type included the glass mosaic murals at the Reaseguros Alianza Building in Mexico City (1953), the artwork at the Torre Banobras in the center of Tlatelolco, the Cine Mácar and the Museo Nacional de Antropología (1964).

In 1932, he founded the dance school of the Secretariat of Public Education with Carlos Orozco Romero and invited the participation of other artists such as Agustín Lazo, Leopoldo Méndez, Silvestre Revueltas and Blas Galindo.

[14] His artistic direction has been compared to that of Rufino Tamayo, generally rejecting large-scale narrative paintings, preferring canvas,[12] being more interested in becoming a painter than in politics[15] (with an exception in the 1950s when he was horrified by nuclear testing).

[2] He had three major epochs, a figurative period from 1907 to 1926, a surrealism phase from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s and from 1950 until his death, geometric forms characterized his work.

[2] His surrealist phase again came from time in Europe, meeting not only Paul Klee and Miró but also fellow Guatemalan Luis Cardoza y Aragón.

Salvador Novo wrote “The pre Hispanic world, in Carlos Mérida, attains a perfect synthesis, an ideal sublimation of numeric rhythm sprung from geometry.

The debt owed by the abstract painting of our time to Carlos Mérida is thus as great as his work is perennially solid and relevant.

[2] While heavily influenced by trends in Europe, especially his earlier work, Mérida felt it important to emphasize his American (New World) identity and culture.

[15] He became convinced of the need to establish natively American art which would express the “original character which animates our nature and our race will inevitably engender a personal artistic expression.”[2] His work reflects on both the Mayan and Aztec civilizations along with the colonial period representing the indigenous as symbols of post Revolution Mexico.

The discovery of Bonampak motivated him deeply, taking new ideas from the ruins and eventually led to his interest in integrating painting and sculpture into architecture.