Malgré tout

Contreras began his training as an engraver in the Plácido Jiménez workshop, entering the National Fine Arts School in México City in 1881. Having won a prize in the sculpture division of one of the said schools exhibitions, he was awarded a scholarship in order to study in Paris, where he became familiar with the latest developments in art and, above all, with Aguste Rodin's (1840-1917) forging of a new, boundless, rough-edged plastic language that sounded the death knell of Academicism in sculpture. The artist returned to México in 1890, becoming director of the Mexican Artistic Foundation, which was charged with executing a large portion of the new public statuary being created for the capital, including the works devoted to Mexican historic events and personages to be installed in Reforma Avenue. In this work, Contreras, who was one of the first exponents of Modernism in early XXth century Mexican sculpture, evokes the state of mind of a chained woman who, despite the shackles that bind her, strains her face forward in yearning, expressing the universal feeling of malaise that is produced when freedom is fettered. The Sculptor, whose free, expressive working of the marble eschews clear-cut forms in favor of a continuous flux of irregular surfaces and pronounced contrasts, addresses the senses -above all those of sight and touch— rather than the intellect. He belongs to the fin-de-siècle avant-garde that was profoundly pessimistic in the face of a rationalist positivism that they found inimical to beauty and hope. The marble sculpture, based on a clay prototype, was first exhibited at the National Casino the same year that it was executed, and later at the Paris Universal Exhibition, where it garnered Contreras the Croix de Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, betokening recognition for México and for the Porfirio Díaz regime. This work was executed by Contreras before he lost his right arm as a result of the cancer that led to his early death. Having been acquired by the National Fine Arts School in 1901, it was placed in the Alameda Central promenade in the nineteen twenties, remaining there for almost 50 years before being restored and housed in the MUNAL in 1983.