As a result of the visit of André Breton, the Pope of Surrealism, to Mexico, many fantasy painters of surrealism made their debut. Among these new artists, female painters such as Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo, and Leonora Carrington were prominent.
Maria Izquierdo, as well, is internationally acclaimed for her works of wondrous atmosphere in the unsophisticated style of painting that grew from Mexican traditional folk art and religious art. With the common daily life and daily products of the masses in Mexico, such as life scenes of Indians, a circus, or shelves and altars full of folk crafts and accessories, as her themes, Izquierdo painted the world of the common people marvelously.
In this work, a common, coarse barn in the countryside of Mexico is depicted, though it is nothing new. Two horses sticking their heads out of the window, which is a scene Izquierdo was fond of painting, and the casually laid logs, both make us feel as if we are looking at an odd pantomime performed in the quiet scenery of daily life, to which no one pays special attention. Here the world of surrealism is peeping out from a tiny crack in reality .
(Source: Selected Works from the Collection of Nagoya City Art Museum, 1998, p. 63.)
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