Guillermo Meza

In Guillermo Meza's Sheet over the Nopal, a young girl dressed in a simple white shift sits close to the viewer, her head raised, her sparse hair flowing as if in a light breeze. Her expression, with open mouth and raised eyebrows, seems to indicate surprise or awe, yet whatever she is looking at remains a mystery. A pristine sheet tangled up in a prickly pear cactus that crowds the background. Though other pictures by the artist anthropomorphize the plant world much more obviously, Meza creates a direct connection here between girl and cactus: both are draped in white cloth, and the girl's skin has a slight green tint. In rural Mexico, laundry is often left to dry on nearby plants in lieu of clotheslines. Manuel Alvarez Bravo's The Washerwomen Implied [Las lavanderas sobreentendidas] (1932) shows white sheets covering the pointed spears [pencas] of a maguey cactus. On a basic level, perhaps Meza's canvas depicts a laundress at rest, yearning for the sun that will dry her sheets. Yet there is something more anxious here; the threatening cactus seems to push the girl forward, distracting her from the task at hand. Part of the Aztec hieroglyph for their capital Tenochtitlán, as well as a common sight and food source, the nopal cactus appears in José María Velasco's iconic views of the Valley of Mexico, in Roberto Montenegro's allegorical murals of the early 1920s, and in several other paintings by Meza. Rather than simply viewing the nopal as a national icon, however, we might compare Meza's picture to Carlos Orozco Romero's The Pledge [La manda] (1942; Museo de Arte Moderno) or Olga Costa's Selfish Heart [Corazón egoísta] (1951; Blaisten collection). In all of these works, the spiny nopal takes on a penitential rather than patriotic significance. Sheet over the Nopal was purchased by collectors Peter and Lady Smithers from the Galería de Arte Mexicano (it was sold with the title 'Los Nopales', but the current title is inscribed by the artist on the back of the canvas). The painting reappeared at Sotheby's in May 2005.