Agustín Lazo

Lazo's paintings of the late 1930s, such as Pietá, share an energized brushstroke that is similar to the crosshatchings he used in his ink and watercolor drawings of the early 1930s. The paint is laid down in short curving arcs, like so many distinct feathers, that combine to create a shimmering effect. MacKinley Helm, among others, noted the stylistic influence of Seurat, Van Gogh and Renoir, whose works Lazo knew and respected. But Lazo's watercolors and paintings of the 1930s also share what Helm called 'a faint aroma of Surrealism.' (1) Indeed, Lazo was the only Mexican artist who had established a direct connection with the European surrealist movement in the 1920s. In the dreamlike Pietá, two horses occupy a sparse landscape of grass and rocks; as in Still Life with Goblets, the night sky actually resembles a heavy velvet curtain, like those in the theater. The unnatural blue and pink hides of the two horses might symbolize their respective genders, but also recall the even more electrically colored horses that romp through the canvases of the German expressionist Franz Marc. According to Helm, Lazo's grandfather raised thoroughbred horses, and the equestrian life is indeed featured in two childlike watercolors from 1924, based on Adolfo Best Maugard's drawing method: The Hacienda [La hacienda] (private collection) and Roping Mares [Lazando yeguas] (Museo de Arte Moderno, Toluca). From then on, the horse—including Manuel Tolsa's 1803 equestrian monument to Charles IV—appears repeatedly in Lazo's work. He most frequently shows horses unsaddled, galloping forward, symbols of freedom and escape. Often they are alone. Here, however, the two animals are still, even contemplative. The painting was illustrated in Luis Cardoza y Aragón's 1940 study of Mexican art, "La nube y el reloj", where it is given the enigmatic title of Pietá, a term usually reserved for images of the Madonna holding the dead Christ.