Joy Laville: Silence and Eternity – A Retrospective Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art

As part of the commemorations for the centenary of the birth of the English-born painter Joy Laville, the Museum of Modern Art make the exhibition “Joy Laville. Silence and eternity.

For Lucina Jiménez, head of the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature, the artist “was inspired by a Mexican landscape where she was able to find a subtlety, both in shape and color, and to give us back a Mexico that perhaps we had not had before.” discovered”.

He added that the rediscovery of many ways of knowing the texture of what is Mexican is due to his vision. “Her sculptures, her drawings – concluded Lucina Jiménez – are here and we hope they will be widely visited, because we know that she is one of the main creators of Mexican art of this century, of the century we live in, because she is present here”.

Never dreamed of having one exhibition, let alone two: Trevor Rowe

“A person ceases to exist when people no longer think about him” and this exhibition is proof that Joy Laville continues to exist, he commented Trevor Roweson of the naturalized Mexican artist, and stressed that his mother never dreamed of having an exhibition, much less two.

Trevor shared how his mother came to Mexico with her own dreams, with the intention to study art and become a painter. She detailed how on Sundays he would accompany her on a bus from San Miguel de Allende to get to Sullivan Park, where she would put up her painting booth and try to sell her work.

For Joy Laville’s son, a key step in his mother’s life was the support of ines lovefrom Mexican Art Gallerysince it represented a very important validation that gave him more trust in his abilities and triggered explorations of his talents and new artistic possibilities.

Reflection on the human condition: Natalia Pollak

For her part, the director of the host venue, Natalia Pollak, commented that the exhibition presents a non-chronological view of Joy Laville’s work, which focuses on the complex existentialist charge of her painting and the way in which she, through her silent spaces and her seriality, reflects a deep reflection on the human condition.

And he recalled that Joy Laville’s last solo exhibition at MAM was a retrospective in 2004. “She was a warm and generous woman, whose exceptional work within the national context deserves to be recognized and appreciated by all future generations. In the context of the centenary of her birth, you will be able to appreciate the singularity of her artistic proposal through 89 pieces that cover 54 years of work, between painting, sculpture, graphic work and ceramics that reveal a different facet within their production, 37 of these works are unpublished, he stressed.

Born on the British Isle of Wight in 1923, Joy emigrated to Mexico in 1956, where she rediscovered her vocation for art and developed an apparently simple artistic proposal, centered on the exploration of color and the prominence of corporeality, which would stand out in the Mexican art scene.

Structured in four nuclei, the exhibition is guided by the chromatic harmony of his canvases, the scaffolding of his compositional planes, the emotional dimension of his landscapes, as well as the presence of figures whose synthetic bodies are placed in timeless spaces, elements with which Laville he stitched together an acute reflection on the human condition.

The first of them, body echoes, draws on nudes, primarily female, with which the artist gives vitality to the abstract and chromatic framework that distinguishes her canvases. On the other hand, in inner crossingthe silent rooms painted by the artist go beyond the mere representation of everyday and domestic spaces, and express a strong existentialist charge.

In the third core, the ocean feeling, Beach scenes are presented, in which the colors, the spatial composition and the reduced presence of bathers invite us to reflect on the human condition in the face of nature and the vicissitudes of life. Finally, a graphic gesture refers to the creative relationship between Laville and her husband, the writer Jorge Ibargüengoitia; the unpublished sketches and the covers with which the creator illustrated the writer’s books are shown.

2023-08-06 18:33:22
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