Noose of the World

The year of 1947 was extremely fruitful for María Izquierdo . After the disappointment of her failed 1945 mural project, she produced some of her strongest and most imaginative oils. In a statement published in 1947, Izquierdo reaffirmed her personal and individual approach to painting, insisting that "a painting is a window open to the human imagination."  

The Noose belongs to a small group of landscapes dated in 1947, each with a different atmosphere. Here, the white horse in the open landscape recalls his own painting, Sunset (1947). 

But while in that painting the horse inhabits a peaceful pastoral scene with trees full of leaves, in this picture the trees are cut and bare, with the sinister noose hanging from the branch. 

The dramatic sky and pruned trees remind us of the terrifying scene in another painting of that same year, Desolation (private collection), and in turn echo José Clemente Orozco’s The White House (1925-1928), a vision about the disasters of the revolution. 

Izquierdo's work frequently has a sardonic humor which complicates any solemn or concrete interpretation. In fact, the horse turns with carelessness under the hanging rope, neither victim nor perpetrator, exuding an air of freedom in a scene that would otherwise be utterly bleak.