Maria Izquierdo: Religion, gender, mexicanidad , and modern art, 1940--1948
Item
-
Title
-
Maria Izquierdo: Religion, gender, mexicanidad , and modern art, 1940--1948
-
Identifier
-
d_2009_2013:d293d4c40f23:10824
-
identifier
-
11025
-
Creator
-
Donovan, Celeste,
-
Contributor
-
Katherine Manthorne
-
Date
-
2011
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Art history | Latin American studies | Womens studies | art | Izquierdo | Mexico | modern | women
-
Abstract
-
This dissertation examines the religious imagery in the art of the Mexican painter Maria Izquierdo (1902--1955). Among the first women in Mexico to earn her living as a professional painter, Izquierdo was an internationally renowned artist in her lifetime and remains one of the most notable artists in twentieth-century Mexican art history. Hers is a legacy that was not easily attained; working within a profession and nationalist discourse that was intensely masculine, she was persistent in her efforts to carve out a legitimate and respected space for women and for herself. Between 1940 and 1948 Izquierdo produced many paintings that incorporated popular and traditional Catholic artifacts and iconography that likewise touched upon feminine cultural experience, such as still-lifes of domestic shrines to the Virgin Mary and portraiture that evoked Madonna and Child motherhood imagery.;My study revises the critical commonplace that Izquierdo's religious imagery reflects one facet of a collective Mexican cultural identity. Rather, I argue that these paintings expose an intricate web of social constructions involving ethnicity, gender, nationalism, and modernity. Examining public statements by the artist and the unique historical, economic, and sociocultural context of the decade of the 1940s, Izquierdo's domestic altars, Madonna imagery, self-portraiture, and related paintings constitute a strategic response to women's issues, the Catholic experience, the particular rhetoric of mexicanidad of that decade, and her concerted efforts to advance her professional career and notoriety. By joining her carefully crafted public persona to a strategic use of religious iconography that tapped into values intimately connected to a wide audience, Izquierdo accomplished what no woman before her had done. She reframed the role of women in the cultural narrative of the nation and successfully positioned herself as a great artist synonymous with Mexican culture itself.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
2009_2013.csv
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Art History
