Recently, I had the opportunity to hear a lecture by Dr. Alberto Hernandez, assistant professor of modern, contemporary, and feminist art at Portland State University. He spoke about the role women artists played in the development of Mexicanidad, or Mexican identity, including both indigenous and colonial influences.
The social movements following the Mexican Revolution of 1910-17 intersected with art when the Minister of Public Education, Jose Vasconcelos, established the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors. These artist/workers formed a Mexican avant-garde that repudiated traditional easel art in favor of public art. Although the murals that were the preferred public art form were based on Renaissance fresco techniques, their subjects differed greatly. The fertility of the land, and of indigenous women, was a predominant theme.
Although their contributions during the years of the Revolution were scarcely recognized, women themselves gained confidence. Seemingly out of nowhere, provincial women organized the first National Female Congress in 1916, in Yucatan. The seeds were sown for the development of feminism.
This was the background from which three women artists emerged. Frida Kahlo studied at the National Preparatory School, where she was exposed to the emerging mural art form. Kahlo embraced folk art such as the retablos people had painted to invoke aid or to thank God for protection. Her art encompassed so many themes, but one was her depictions of gender violence. A Few Small Nips (1935) was based on a newspaper article about a woman whose husband stabbed her 126 times after learning that she’d been unfaithful to him. A “few nips,” indeed.
One of Maria Izquierdo’s paintings from the midi-1940s, Viernes de Dolores (“Sorrowful Friday,” observed on the final Friday of Lent), depicts an altar to the Virgin Mary in which a portrait of the Virgin is decorated with fruits, flags, and flowers, framed by lace curtains. Izquierdo wanted to paint murals, herself. But when she competed for a mural commission from the Department of the Federal District, her male competitors campaigned to have her disqualified by having her scaffolding for the project condemned.
Izquierdo also looked to incorporate Mexican traditions into her art. Her design for her planned but never completed mural combined modern women and traditional Mexican women in imagery based on the style of the 16th c. Codex Mendoza, an Aztec manuscript.
Photographer Lola Alvarez Bravo focused on recording social change in her country. She made photo montages denouncing exploitation of the rural, working population. Her Burial at Yagalag (1946), exoticizes its subjects but retains their dignity. Mexico City’s Architectural Anarchy (1953) was a critique of the razing of la ciudad’s ancient architectural sites in favor of modern buildings. In an ironic riposte, Bravo countered modernization by providing many oversized photo murals for business buildings.
By the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mexicanidad was passe. Artists had had enough of a government that would pay for murals but not fulfill their goals. Mexican feminist activists invited to Washington D.C. met with the condescension of American peers who seemed determined to save them from macho culture. But in 1976, the International Women’s Conference was held in Mexico City. By that time, Frida Kahlo’s reputation was firmly established. Lola Alvarez Bravo’s reputation grew during her lifetime, and Maria Izquierdo’s legacy is only now receiving the attention it deserves. Their interpretations of Mexican femininity were important contributions to the construction of Mexicanidad.