Watercolors by Maria Izquierdo and Raul Uribe, July 15-August 6, 1940

Maria Cenobia Izquierdo Gutierrez was a Mexican painter born in San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco on October 30, 1902. She is known for being the first Mexican woman to exhibit her artwork in the United States, which she did in 1930 at the Art Center in New York City. At age five she moved to Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico after her father’s death. Later when her mother remarried she was being raised by her grandparents in Northern Mexico. In 1923, she and her family moved to Mexico City where she attended the Academy of Fine Arts and studied under Rufino Tamayo. She began attending art school in 1928 around the time of the end of the Mexican Revolution. Under the new president’s reforms, she and many of Mexico’s most talented artists were drawn to the academy. She was also greatly influenced by Diego Rivera who directed the Academy in 1929 and later helped launch Izquierdo’s career. In February 1931, she left the Academy of Fine Arts.

In the early 1920s a circle of young writers and artists, Including Maria Izquierdo, published a magazine called the Contemporáneos. The group would later adopt this name to identify themselves. Izquierdo, along with Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Rufino Tamayo, and Julio Castellanos, all had been associated with the Movimiento Pro-Arte Mexicano, founded by Adolfo Best Maugard. She also shared a studio with her mentor and lover Tamayo for four years.

Izquierdo's art gained international recognition in 1930 when she became the first Mexican woman to have a solo exhibition in the United States. An exhibition funded and organized by Frances Flynn Paine, Izquierdo's works were displayed at the Art Center in New York . While Izquierdo's art was being exhibited in New York, two of her other paintings were a part of Rene d'Harnoncourt's traveling exhibition. Both the paintings that made up her solo exhibition and were included in René d' Harnoncourt's traveling exhibition, went on to become a part of an extensive exhibition at the Art Center on 56th street for five years. Her art was exhibited in New York's Museum of Modern Art as well as in Paris, France in 1940. This exhibition at the Legion of Honor came at this jump in her career.

Quickly becoming an internationally known artist, Izquierdo hit the peak of her career in the early 1940s. In May 1944 she began serving as the cultural ambassador for Mexico and traveled to several South American countries until late September. Her career, however, hit both a financial and artistic rough patch in the mid-1940s when she had her first stroke. That same year, she lost her commission to paint a cycle of murals in Mexico City. Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco, and David Siquerios all proclaimed she lacked both talent and experience to complete such a large project. Diego Rivera, the man who once served as her number one supporter, then hindered her career.

At age fourteen, she had an arranged marriage to a senior army officer, Colonel Cándido Posadas, and bore three children by the time she was 17 years old. It is said that her daughter influenced some of Izquierdo's work. She divorced around 1928 and later had a second marriage, also short-lived, with Chilean painter Raul Uribe, to whom she was married at the time of this exhibition at the Legion of Honor. She suffered a stroke in the mid-1940s which had a significant effect on her health, work and dexterity, but she persisted. Although her last years were some of the most painful in her life, she did not stop painting until she was physically unable. On December 2, 1955, she died in Mexico City.

Raul Uribe Castillo was a Chilean artist born in 1912 in Chillan, Chile. He studied art at the School of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile around 1931. He then served as a professor at his alma mater in 1934 and 1935. Notably, he organized the first art education in the primary schools of Santiago during 1935 and 1936. He then moved to Mexico City around 1936 and was living there at the time of this exhibition. He was married to Maria Izquierdo during 1940 but little else is known about this artist.

Sources:
Press release. Watercolors by Maria Izquierdo and Raul Uribe, July 15-August 6, 1940, Legion of Honor Exhibition Records, LH-ER. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Archives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADa_Izquierdo_(artist)