Alacena

Drawing upon the games of perspective employed in Baroque still life painting, in the 1940s the Mexican artist Maria Izquierdo created a small group of innovative and humorous images of shallow cupboards or alacenas. In their use of illusionary space and complex color combinations, Izquierdo depicts an eclectic collection of objects, including examples of blown and pressed glass, a small wooden cross, a bowl of fruit, and three folk art animals. The objects of Izquierdo's Alacena reveal a dual culture: European and American. A trompe l'oeil effect is created through elements such as the fruit bowl, which leans off the shelf and into the viewer's space. Izquierdo decorated her home with similar alacenas, and many of the objects in the painting can be seen in photographs of the artist's studio and today remain carefully preserved by the artist's family. For example, the brown and white bull in the top right-hand corner of the painting is from Peru, and Izquierdo likely acquired it while in Lima during her 1944 tour of South America. Izquierdo's adoption of folk art forms held a strong nationalist significance, but the artist also related to them on a purely aesthetic level. Describing her use of such objects in another painting, Izquierdo commented on her multi-sensorial reaction to their textures, colors and sounds, and reflected that "the emotions aroused by the objects suggest the painting and its title to me". Sometimes the result of this is light-hearted, such as the humorous encounter between the hen and the rooster in Alacena, but it is also a poetic adoption of folk art forms unequaled by other artists in the period.

We present today's work thanks to the Museo Blaisten.

P.S. Did you know that painters always loved to paint ... stuff in cupboards? Cabinets of curiosities have a fascinating story!

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