María Izquierdo (born María Cenobia Izquierdo Gutiérrez; October 30, 1902 – December 2, 1955) was a Mexican painter. She is known for being the first Mexican woman to have her artwork exhibited in the United States. She committed her life and career to art that displayed her Mexican roots.
Early life Izquierdo was born in San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco, Mexico. At age five, she and her mother moved to Torreón after the death of her father. Her mother later married Dr. Nicanor Valdes Rodríguez, at which point Izquierdo was raised by her grandparents and relatives in small towns in Northern Mexico. Her grandmother and aunt were devout Catholics, and much of her upbringing revolved around daily Catholic traditions.
Always interested in art, Izquierdo spent much of her time alone, teaching herself art techniques. In 1923, she and her family moved to Mexico City, where she was able to go to school to study art and develop into a professional artist.
Training Izquierdo began studying in January 1928 at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (Academy of Fine Arts). Her move to Mexico City in the 1920s evoked her to explore her growing passion for art and came about the same time a paradigm shift occurred in Mexico. At the same time, the Mexican Revolution came to an end, bringing along a change of values in Mexico. Through President Álvaro Obregón, many new reform policies were emphasized, pushing for more social and educational institutions that upheld traditional Mexican beliefs and culture. These ideals resonated with Izquierdo, drawing her to attend the art academy.
Prior to Obregón's reforms, European art served as the model in art institutions. His new reforms drew in many of Mexico's most talented artists, commissioning their creation of murals addressing the importance of traditional Mexican values, which were painted on both schools and government buildings. While attending the Academy of Fine Arts, Izquierdo was instructed by Rufino Tamayo, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano and German Gedovius. She was also highly influenced by Diego Rivera, who served the director of Academy of Fine Arts in 1929 and later became pivotal in helping launch Izquierdo's career.
Recognized as one of Rivera's favorite students, the praise she received by Rivera lead to her undergoing frequent hostility from her peers. In February 1931, Izquierdo left the Academy of Fine Arts because of the animosity she received from her classmates and her frustration with the school's growing concentration on art serving only as a catalyst for political change. In the early 1920s a circle of young writers and artists, Including Maria Izquierdo, published a magazine called the Contemporáneos. The group would later adopt this name to identify themselves. Izquierdo, along with Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Rufino Tamayo, and Julio Castellanos, all had been associated with the Movimiento Pro-Arte Mexicano, founded by Adolfo Best Maugard. Beyond the status of colleagues and friends, the Contemporáneos were collaborators. For the Contemporáneos, the city was a hub of Mexico's evolving modernity. While celebrating Mexico's unique traditions, the Contemporáneos embraced this idea of universal cosmopolitanism, and believed that Mexican culture should remain open to international influences and to the voice of the urban intellectual.
An instructor who continued to serve as a mentor even after she left the Academy of Fine Arts was Rufino Tamayo. He was said to be her lover.
Sharing a studio with the young artist for four years, Tamayo had a profound impact on Izquierdo's early development as an artist. Introducing her to watercolor, the two shared similar subject matter and color palettes. Both believed art should serve more as a poetic outlet than a political one, and while their professional relationship grew, so did a romantic one. Throughout their relationship, Izquierdo remained independent. Becoming an active part of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revoluctionaros (LEAR; League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists) in 1934, Izquierdo went on to use the artistic techniques that Tamayo helped her develop to create her own artistic style.
Initial career and exhibitions
In the early 1920s, Izquierdo began associating herself with the Movimiento Pro-Arte Mexicano and the Contemporáneos. One of her colleagues and close friend, Lola Álvarez Bravo remembers her as "a very cheerful woman with a folk spirit... like a jar full of pure fresh water... The inclination that Maria had for folklore was not that of a distant viewer, she seemed rather to be an insider, like one more folk element."
Within just her first year at the Academy of Fine Arts, Izquierdo participated in four art exhibitions. The first art exhibit opened on November 19, 1928, and was organized by the Academy's student union, showcasing three of her paintings: "Marina" (Seacape), "El juicio de Toral" (The Trial of Toral) and "Cámara con gallo" (Camera with Rooster). The exhibition was well attended by those who held prestigious roles at the Academy. Gaining praise from art academy leaders like Assistant Secretary of Education, Moisés Sáenz, the crowd was immediately impressed by her talent. Gaining prominence within the art world, Izquierdo's name continued to spread in the years that followed. Diego Rivera described her at her first individual exhibition as "one of the most appealing figures in the art scene in Mexico". He often described her as "one of the best at the academy" and many publications reviewed the 1929 solo exhibition highlighting Rivera exclamation that Izquierdo "was the only real artist with merit" at the Academy).
Izquierdo's art gained international recognition in 1930 when she became the first Mexican woman to have a solo exhibition in the United States. An exhibition funded and organized by Frances Flynn Paine, Izquierdo's works were displayed at the Art Center in New York . While Izquierdo's art was being exhibited in New York, two of her other paintings were a part of Rene d'Harnoncourt's traveling exhibition. Both the paintings that made up her solo exhibition and were included in René d' Harnoncourt's traveling exhibition, went on to become a part of an extensive exhibition at the Art Center on 56th street for 5 years. Her art was exhibited in New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1940 and that same year was also exhibited in Paris.
Quickly becoming an internationally known artist, Izquierdo hit the peak of her career in the early 1940s. In May 1944 she began serving as the cultural ambassador for Mexico and traveled to several South American countries until late September. Her career, however, hit both a financial and artistic rough patch in the mid-1940s when she had her first stroke. That same year, she lost her commission to paint a cycle of murals in the Palacio del Departamento del Distrito Federal (The District Federal Department) to "Los Tres Grandes". Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco, and David Siquerios all proclaimed she lacked both talent and experience to complete such a large project. Diego Rivera, the man who once served as her number one supporter, then hindered her career. Izquierdo is well known for rebutting the Mexican muralist actions with her famous quote: "it is a crime to be born a woman and have talent".
Maria Izquierdo was born into a Catholic family and was brought up in the Catholic church. This painting is from the famous biblical story “Adam and Eve” in translation for Izquierdo she named her painting “Adan y Eva.” She made this painting to symbolize her culture and demonstrate it from a different standpoint. She wanted others to view the story of Adam and Eve through her own visual perspective instead of the strict traditional standpoint. Izquierdo’s paintings and approach was always more personal, and she wanted to add a touch of her own culture into her artwork. That is why Adam and Eve weren't just human statues; she painted them to be folk- art statues, surrounded by an array of objects that symbolize Mexican culture. This version of the painting that Izquierdo executed so well shows a more naturalistic version of the biblical scene; it allowed those in Mexican culture to view the painting under the perspective of their own ethnicity. She touched on intimate symbolism, still lifes, and spiritual imagery. Izquierdo changed the way we saw this painting and biblical story by allowing us to view it outside of the traditional interpretation and more in touch with her culture and ethnicity.
An exhibition that traveled to Frankfurt, Vienna, and Dallas in 1987–88 showed a group of paintings by Izquierdo that displayed to a non-Mexican audience the presence of another painter of similar stature and originality. The career of this artist was the subject of a recent exhibition organised by the Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City. Izquierdo's work shares many of the same themes and pre-occupations as that of Kahlo. Her paintings often refer to tragic elements in her life and incorporate the type of dream-like fantasies that are to be found in the work of artists of the Mexican School. The exhibition included 160 works. The catalog presented five biographical and interpretive essays, with a complete bibliography, chronology and exhibition history. The corpus of photographs of both the artist and her work gives a visual repertory of virtually every known painting, drawing and print.
Style Classified by some as a surrealist painter, María Izquierdo never identified herself as a surrealist. Instead, Izquierdo identified with the Contemporáneos, who believed that Mexican culture should be rightfully seen as a vital contributor to the dominant Western culture. She wasn't afraid to go against popular Mexican art movements and follow her own style of painting. Her culture as a mestiza was an essential part of her artistic style and themes used in her work. Izquierdo was celebrated as an artist with a genuine understanding of native and rural traditions, and her altar paintings were recognized at the time for "their delightful indigenous ingenuousness." Her naive painterly technique, intended to recall the folk painting of regional artisans, heightened the effect. Still, many of her paintings contain unusual subject matters and interesting juxtapositions. Izquierdo's peculiar inclusion into a Mexican nationalist discourse suggest ways of bringing together several sets of discourses too often kept separate: those of Latin America, of feminism, of modernism, and of nationalism. Still, many of her paintings contain unusual subject matters and interesting juxtapositions. Known for her use of bold, rich, and bright colors, most of Izquierdo's paintings were done using oil paints or watercolor. Although she was and is still often compared to Frida Kahlo because both woman launched their careers at similar times, the two have very individual styles. At the beginning she would paint still life and portraits. She experimented with many different styles and techniques; such as, oil painting, watercolor, still life, and landscape.