At 3:09 this morning, the great architect Leopoldo Francisco Goût Ortiz de Montellano died at 94 after a life of adventure, creativity, and love. Along with being architect, he was a designer, visionary, father, friend. Born in La Providencia in the Cintalapa Valley in Chiapas, Mexico on February 22, 1930, Don Leopoldo was one of seven brothers. His mother was María Luisa Ortiz y Montellano de Goût, his father Gonzalo Goût Abrego.
He created spaces and houses combining architecture with modern art, from the design of the Diana Cinema in Mexico City, with its frontal lattice structure, to the RAYO Museum of Modern Art in Roldanillo, Colombia; he also commissioned his friend and the great Mexican modern artist Manuel Felguerez to create a piece of art that fused painting, sculpture, and muralism with abstract art.
When he wasn’t creating museums and other structures, he was designing the homes and studios, as well as various other buildings, for some of the greatest artists of his time: Manuel Felguerez, Arnaldo Cohen, Luis Lopez Loza, and others.
Don Leopoldo was the first husband of the legendary Andrea Valeria, who died in 2019 and had four children: Medieval historian and language teacher, Gwendollyn Valeria Goût; artist, writer and producer Leopoldo Leopoldo Goût.; actress and now doula Christianne Goût; and filmmaker and writer, Everardo Valerio Goût.
His grandchildren are Eloísa Valeria, Román Emiliano, Tula, Anael Esther, Odelia Sarah Shmuel, Leopoldo Valerio, Inés Celestia. And then there is the extended Goût family; uncles, cousins, nephews, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as well as countless friends and colleagues, all inspired by the spaces that Don Leopoldo imagined.
This man had many lives and lived them all with style, from dancing the final scene of the film “Simon of the Desert” by his friend Luis Buñuel to appearing in a scene in Everardo and Leopoldo’s “Dias de Gracia.”
He was a trickster and a provocateur, with the spirit of a young man almost to the end. And now he’s out there, somewhere….
