Lot 55: MARÍA IZQUIERDO (1902-1955)

ALACENA

measurements
41 1/4 by 33 1/2 in.

alternate measurements
(104.8 by 85 cm)

oil on canvas

signed lower left

Painted in 1942.

PROVENANCE

Mr. and Mrs. Sam Wishnack, Mexico City
Thence by descent

LITERATURE

Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo, María Izquierdo, Mexico City, November 1988-February 1989, no. 116, p. 327, illustrated

NOTE

María Izquierdo was the first Mexican woman to have a one person exhibition in New York, at the Arts Center in 1930. An iconoclast -- she left behind her bourgeois background and husband, studying briefly at the famed Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City from 1928-29. Izquierdo soon became frustrated by the school's conservative teachings and abandoned her formal training. Like her partner during this period Rufino Tamayo, Izquierdo rejected social realism in favor of an art that was universal and poetic. And like Tamayo, Izquierdo developed what art historian Raquel Tibol has termed a "voluntary, anti-academic, 'primitivism'" that favored imagination and spontaneity over technical refinement and realism. Ultimately Izquierdo was interested in the poetic dimensions of the ordinary and transforming the commonplace into a metaphor for human existence.

Alacena (Cupboard) is a fine example of Izquierdo's mature work [1] and provides an open window into the artist's personal life and the things she loved. Comprised of real and imagined objects, Alacena functions much like a self-portrait by revealing aspects of the artist's physical belongings as well as her most private memories and fantasies--the characters and animals from her childhood excursions to the circus, her collection of Mexican folk and popular art objects, figurines of horses, animals, and other things that ignited her imagination and provided inspiration. Izquierdo once wrote, "I strive to make my work reflect authentic Mexico, which I feel and love. I avoid themes that are anecdotal, folkloric, and political because they do not have poetic or expressive strength, and I think that in the world of painting, a work is an open window to the human imagination." [2] Alacena, like much of the artist's production, beautifully illustrates this sentiment, by reflecting a keen sense or spirit of "Mexicanidad" or "Mexicanness," that is at once personal, imaginative, and highly poetic.

[1] According to the artist's catalogue raisonné, Alacena was painted in 1942. See María Izquierdo (Mexico City: Centro Cultural / Arte Contemporáneo, 1988), p. 327.

[2] As quoted in Elizabeth Ferrer, "A Singular Path: The Artistic Development of María Izquierdo," in exhibition catalogue The True Poetry: The Art of María Izquierdo (New York: Americas Society Art Gallery, 1997), p. 17.