Alfonso Michel

With the project of a post-revolutionary nation, many educational programs were established that involved several different generations of artists who firmly believed in  the creation of a modern Mexican culture. But by the mid-forties the wearying speech of officialistic rhetoric had ended in betrayal, not only many of the artistic utopias, but also the dedication and spirit of the painters. In La muerte del circo as this painting from the Blaisten Collection is also known, we see a wrenching image of a fictitious horse that, nevertheless, struggles in torment to maintain life in his wounded mortal body: in the background the empty tents of an abandoned circus on a desolate valley on a sterile plane are the silent witnesses. Undoubtedly this is a metaphor of the end of a cycle, of an ephemeral party, gay like the circus, in which crude reality is easily forgotten. We are not familiar with any painting Michel did with a political subject matter, but we know of his statements, a biting and exact critic. At the same time his contact with Europe has him participating in the general unrest of the postwar, forcing him to create an impasse in the poetic interlude of his artistic vision.