Leonora Carrington, Grandmother Moorhead's Aromatic Kitchen, 1975

     Leonora Carrington's work teems with references to escape and freedom, alchemy and transformation. These themes are often closely tied with her biography; running away from her restrictive childhood and into the male-dominated Surrealist world, that Carrington sought out a means of escape through painting and her dear friend Remedios Varo is no surprise. Carrington and Varo, both ex-patriot female painters living in Mexico, helped each other escape everyday confinements through the transformative powers of alchemical cooking.

     At its root, Alchemy is the ancient practice of transforming base metals into gold. However, in their sharing of recipes and ideas, alchemy enabled Carrington and Varo to transform a traditional domestic space (the kitchen) into a powerful site of female fortitude. Susan Aberth notes that, “for Carrington, traditional sites of female domestic labor are transformed into arenas of occult drama.” In her painting of 1975, Grandmother Moorhead’s Aromatic Kitchen (above), she transforms the kitchen from a place of female oppression and labor into one of female power. Carrington has represented the kitchen as a place of strange transformations. Women are engaged in mysterious activities in a secret world unbeknownst to men; the women in this kitchen appear not to be cooking dinner for their family, but instead concocting magical spells. The painting also includes women huddled over a Mexican griddle, a place where many Mexican women spend most of their day, cooking. The garlic cloves on the floor also have a history in Mexican healing and magical rituals, of which Carrington was very interested.

References:

Aberth, Susan, “Leonora Carrington,” Women’s Art Journal, 51.3 (1992). 

Chadwick, Whitney, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985.)   

Chadwick, Whitney.  “Leonora Carrington: Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness.”  Women’s Art Journal 7.1 (1986). 

The Mexican Museum, Leonora Carrington: The Mexican Years, 1943-1985 (San Francisco: The Mexican Museum, 1991). 
Art:
Charles B. Goddard Center, Ardmore, Oklahoma

Joaquín Torres-García, América Invertida, 1943

In 1943, Joaquín Torres-García created the "School of the South," with the ambition of aiding Uruguay's artistic isolation.  His mission was founded on a statement he had made in 1935, "A great School of Art ought to arise here in our country...I have said School of the South; because in reality, our North is the South.  There should be no North for us, except in opposition to our South.  That is why we now turn the map upside down."  Torres-García was interested in pushing Uruguayan artists to negate colonialism; to make art as though they were directly descended from their pre-Hispanic heritage.  His drawing of 1943, América Invertida, is an excellent visual articulation of his desire to put Uruguay in control of its own artistic production.


References:
Barnitz, Jacqueline. Twetieth-Century Art of Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.
Art:
Museo Torres García, Montevideo, Uruguay

Joaquín Torres-García, Composición Universal, 1933

Joaguín Torres-García was a key player in Uruguayan art in the early 1900s.  After spending much of his youth in Europe, he returned to his home of Montevideo in 1932 where, because of his European experience, he was held in high regard.  Torres-García founded the Uruguay Society of Arts, was responsible for bringing constructivism to Uruguay and was overall a huge influence on younger artists throughout Latin America.

As seen in his Composición Universal of 1933, Torres-García created a distinct geometric style.  His 1929 meeting with Piet Mondrian in Paris inspired him to push the limits of his geometric forms into the grid, allowing him to evolve his art without any hindrance of three dimensional illusion.  Torres-García filled his grids with an extensive lexicon of symbols that gained momentum throughout his career.  His symbols varied greatly, drawing from pre-Hispanic cultures (the sun), Masonic symbols (the knife) as well as modern objects (the clock).  By drawing from a variety of sources, Torres-García visualized his belief in a universal art that did not tie him to specific nationalistic ideals or local tradition.  Though his ideas are akin to those of the Neoplasticists, he drew from multitudes of sources (including his past) rather than severing his ties with a concrete past (like Mondrian and others).  Later in his career, using his depth of iconography and earthy pallet, Torres-García became more interested in laying a foundation for Uruguayan arts.

References:
Barnitz, Jacqueline. Twetieth-Century Art of Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.
Art:
Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, Indiana

Tarsila do Amaral, Abaporú, 1928

Tarsila do Amaral painted Abaporú (1928) for her then husband (and longtime friend and collaborator) Oswalde de Andrade.  Though Tarsila began working in a more cubist style, by the late 1920's she was interested in Surrealism - a movement which she was exposed to while traveling in Europe. Her works such as Abaporú, with its strong distortions of the body, show parallels to the work of Spanish Surrealist Joan Miró.  

The dramatic foreshortening of the figure, with a tiny head and enormous feet, are interpreted as representing a particularly Brazilian (or South American) perspective.  The large feet are anchored to the ground, the Brazilian soil, while the tiny head represents less interest or importance in the intellectual world of the mind. These were articulating ideas that were already popular in Brazil at the time, particularly surrounding Oswalde's "Pau Brasil" manifesto of 1924.  In this he warned against academic influence and described Brazil as "wild, näive, picturesque and tender."

Tarsila did not title the painting before giving it to Oswalde; he named it Abaporú, which translates as "man eats." Soon after, Oswalde wrote his "Manifesto Antopófagia" (Anthropophagy Manifesto) and utilized the now aptly named Abaporú as one of the movement's central images.  The manifesto discussed a sort of cultural cannibalism, in which artists of the Americas would devour the art of Europe, internalize it, and then create their own distinct (and arguably superior) art.  This was an important crux of thought as it aggressively did away with any previous notions that South American art was good when it was replicating European art, namely that imposed through colonization.  In taking her interest in Surrealism (as she had seen it in Europe), and utilizing it to create this distinctly South American image, Tarsila was painting quite on par with the words of Oswalde's manifesto. 

References:

Barnitz, Jacqueline. Twetieth-Century Art of Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.

Bary, Leslie. Oswald de Andrade's "Cannibalist Manifesto." Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 19, No. 38 (Jul. - Dec., 1991), pp. 35-37.

Art:

Collection of Eduardo Costantini (often shown at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires)