Maria Izquierdo (1902 - 1955)

Aurora Posadas Izquierdo Collection, Mexico City
Belén Valdéz Gutiérrez Collection, Mexico City 
Silvia Posadas Valdéz Collection, Mexico City 
Andrés Blaisten Collection, Mexico City 
Maria Esthela de Santos Collection, Monterrey
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Surrealist Art from Latin America, November 23, 1999, lot 13, illustrated in color

Mexico City, Galería de Arte Moderno, Exposición Homenaje a María Izquierdo, 1907-1955, 1956
Mexico City, Museo de Arte Moderno, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, María Izquierdo y su obra, October, 1971, no. 24
Mexico City, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Exposición Homenaje a María Izquierdo, March 7-April 15, 1979
Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Arte, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes,  Los surrealistas en México, 1986, no. 107, p. 113, illustrated
Mexico City, Centro Cultural / Arte Contemporáneo, María Izquierdo, 1988, no. 140, p. 48; also p. 358, illustrated in color
Las Palmas, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, December 1989-January 1990;
Madrid, Fundación Cultural Mapfre Vida,  El surrealismo en el viejo y nuevo mundo, p. 180, illustrated in color
Monterrey, Museo de Monterrey, La mujer en México, 1990
Monterrey, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, María Izquierdo, October-November, 1991
Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Art d'Amérique Latine 1911-1968, November 12, 1992-January 11, 1993, no. 10
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, June 6-September 7, 1993, no. 6, p. 120, illustrated 
Chicago, The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, June 14-September 8, 1996; Mexico City, Museo de Arte Moderno, October 31-January 26, 1997, María Izquierdo, 1902-1955, p. 108, illustrated in color
New York, Americas Society Art Gallery, May 6-July 27, 1997; Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, September 27-December 28, 1997; Corpus Christi, Art Museum of South Texas, January 13-March 8, 1998, The True Poetry: The Art of María Izquierdo,  no. 63, illustrated in color

Ali Rajev, "María Izquierdo y el subconciente," Alma Médica, Mexico City, 1949, p. 16
Raquel Tibol, “María Izquierdo y su dispuesta realidad”, María Izquierdo y su obra, México, 1971, discussed
Carlos Monsiváis, “María Izquierdo: la idolatría de lo visible”, María Izquierdo. México, 1986, p. 6, illustrated in color
Oliver Debroise, “María Izquierdo”, María Izquierdo. México, 1988, discussed
Luis-Martín Lozano, “María Izquierdo. Sobre la moderna pintura mexicana”, María Izquierdo, 1902-1955. Chicago, 1996, discussed
Raquel Tibol, “Appunti su María Izquierdo”, Lapis. Percorsi Della riflessione femminile. Milano, no 29, March 1996, p. 58, illustrated
Elizabeth Ferrer, “A Single Path. The Artistic Development of María Izquierdo”, The True Poetry. The Art of María Izquierdo, New York, 1997, discussed
Dawn Ades, “Surrealism and the reperesentation of the female subject in Mexico and postwar Paris”, Cambridge, 1998. p. 121, illustrated
Lynn Gamwell, Dreams 1900-2000. Science, Art and the Unconscious Mind. New York, 2000, p. 243, illustrated
Luis-Martín Lozano, “De la vanguardia a la posguerra: dos décadas de pintura mexicana”, Siglo XX. Grandes maestros mexicanos, México, 2002, discussed
Luis-Martín Lozano, María Izquierdo. Una verdadera pasión por el color. México, 2002, p. 287, illustrated in color
Raquel Tibol, “Factores surrealistas en la obra de María Izquierdo y Frida Kahlo”, Women Surrealists in Mexico, 2002, discussed 
Rita Eder, et. al., “The Ancestral and the Living”, In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States, (exhibition catalogue) Prestel, 2012, discussed

This work is in very good condition overall. Small paint loss is present in the center left near the upper area of canvas. This painting is part of the National Heritage of Mexico and cannot be permanently exported from the country. Accordingly, it is offered for sale in New York from the catalogue and will not be available in New York for inspection or delivery. The painting will be released to the purchaser in Mexico in compliance with all local requirements. Prospective buyers may contact Sotheby’s representatives in Mexico City and Monterrey for an appointment to view the work.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

This painting is part of the National Heritage of Mexico and cannot be permanently exported from the country. Accordingly, it is offered for sale in New York from the catalogue and will not be available in New York for inspection or delivery. The painting will be released to the purchaser in Mexico in compliance with all local requirements. Prospective buyers may contact Sotheby’s representatives in Mexico City and Monterrey for an appointment to view the work.

 

LUIS-MARTIN LOZANO

In the history of 20th-century Mexican art, the painting of María Izquierdo stands out with a dazzling presence. Izquierdo possessed an intuitive gift for the handling of color and a sensual pictorial palette capable of evoking textures full of mystery and oneiric atmospheres. Her work was esteemed by prominent Mexican writers and drew the attention of the Surrealist poet Antonin Artaud when he visited Mexico in 1936.  She had a first solo exhibition in New York in 1930 and presented her paintings at the Museum of Modern Art in the context of the exhibition Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art in 1940. A prolific artist, she consistently exhibited throughout the decade of the 1940s both in Mexico and in the United States, Paris, Peru and Chile. In her mature work, she developed an artistic practice that synthesized sources from Mexican popular and vernacular culture with international discourses on modern painting maintaining an open dialogue with the work of Giorgio di Chirico, Cézanne, Matisse and Braque.

Izquierdo painted Sueño y presentimento, a thoroughly Surrealist picture, in 1947. The product of a strange dream that precluded the artist from sleeping one night; it originated as a pencil sketch later stacked on a canvas and subsequently painted. In her nightmare, Maria held her own severed head with one hand; her long hair entangled in the branches and roots of trees growing outside the window. Meanwhile, her own body--bloodied like a Xipetotec God--escapes decapitated and fades into the background of a metaphysical landscape. Like other Surrealists, María Izquierdo was profoundly attracted to the oneiric and the uncontrollable forces of the subconscious. In Sueño y presentimento, she achieved not only a nightmarish narrative but a pictorial premonition of her own pain. A few months later, the painter would suffer a hemiplegia and would become partially paralyzed and speechless; a sad ordeal that would mark misfortune for the rest of her days as an artist.