Rosario Cabrera

The case of Rosario Cabrera is a good example for understanding the transition from the aesthetics of the academy to those of the open schools. Cabrera began her formal studies in the National School of Fine Arts and later became linked to the painting center. Her fisrt works still show the influence of modernism and good knowldege of draughtmanship, thus she should not be considered a naïf or unsophisticated painter. On the contrary, she showed her works in the XXV and XXVI edition of the annual exhibitions of the official institution of fine arts; her promisimg artistic career took her to live and have individual shows in Paris in the mid-twenties. On her return, as several of her contemporaries, she became enthusiastic about the new educational policies and firmly embraced the aesthetic benefits of the artistic pedagogy of free expression, so that around 1928-29 she directed the Open Air School of Los Reyes in Coyoacan and later in Cholula. It is almost assuredly from the latter that the works that found their way into this collection come.