Untitled

“This Mexicanissimo painter, without striving to be so, brings along all the drama that obscures what is Mexican, together with the good humor that lights it up,” declared Rufino Tamayo. “His message is simple and direct; it does not remain on the surface, as it happens with what is purely intellectualizing, but it reaches our innermost selves and makes us feel it and enjoy it thoroughly because it is full of truth” (quoted in G. Sepúlveda, “Introduction,” Rodolfo Morales: Master of Dreams, exh. cat., Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, 2005, p. 17). Morales studied at the Academia de San Carlos and taught art students for years before drawing national attention—and Tamayo’s signal endorsement—with his exhibition at La Casa de las Campanas in Cuernavaca in 1975. Morales returned to his native Ocotlán a decade later, able to dedicate himself full-time to painting for the remainder of his career. “I came here to live in my memories,” he explained. “Nostalgia and melancholy are very important to me” (quoted in G. Thompson, “Rodolfo Morales, 75, Painter of Peasant Life in Mexico,” New York Times, 6 February 2001). Like fellow Oaxacans Rodolfo Nieto and Francisco Toledo, Morales probed a metaphysical mexicanidad, rooted in the region’s history and cultural patrimony, in his paintings of the land, its customs, and its people—almost always women, archetypal and idealized, as lovingly rendered in the present Untitled.
“Rodolfo was never really alone, especially late in life,” suggests curator Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros. “He was accompanied by the scores of women he painted, the bevy of angels flying above Oaxaca that were sometimes just a head or arms” (“Rodolfo Morales,” Art Nexus 40, May-July 2001, p. 44). Morales famously transformed the Oaxacan women he knew into allegorical figures, often guardian angels and keepers of an olden world and its traditions. Ten female faces peek out beneath a lush field of pink-and-purple flowers in the foreground of this Untitled, their expressions solemn and sagacious. Oversized hands float freely within the foliage, their open gestures conveying feelings of amity, kinship, and solidarity. In blanketing the women in a luxuriant carpet of flora, Morales emphasized their autochthonous connection to the land, embedding them in the botany and geography of the native landscape. The elongated horizontal format of the canvas parallels the panoramic vista that stretches beyond the flowers: brilliant striations of red, yellow, green, and fuchsia glow in the background before yielding to the mountains that rise in the distance, sloping gently against an azure sky. “Although his landscapes tend to describe the border between waking and dreaming, his atmospheres are somewhat unreal,” notes Carlos Molina. “These images speak of a bucolic arcadia. They are the poeticized recounting of his native town, Ocotlán de Morelos, Oaxaca” (“Rodolfo Morales,” Art Nexus 62, October-December 2006, p. 146). Morales conjures just such an idyllic vision in this Untitled, imbuing a poignant and magical scene of womanhood and country with timelessness and dramatic, telluric splendor.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park