Ángela Gurría

Nature Exalted
Miriam Kaiser*

an has felt the urgency, the need to ex- Artist Ángela Gurría drinks from that infinite

M press feelings, to show his surroundings

and for that he must use his talent to
create. And what is it he transmits if not what sur-
spring with her own visual language, through her
eternal, constant search and experimentation both
with techniques and materials. Her visual pro-
rounds him: the sky, the sea, mountains, animals, posals come to us transformed into contemporary
his fellow men and his ways of speaking, singing sculptures.
and being: that is, nature in all its manifestations.1 She is recognized mainly as a sculptress since
that is the medium in which she has developed
* Art critic and curator. most of her work. However, she has delved into
Photos reproduced courtesy of Mexico City’s Modern Art Museum. the most diverse techniques throughout her long

Photos by Daniel Munguía

The Dove’s Dream, 63 x 96 x 45 cm, no date (stone). Private collection.

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career: sketching, as plans for another work or as them up and turn them into sculptures using
a finished work, ceramics, the different printing several different-sized pedestals.”2 Another of her
techniques and stained-glass windows, to men- monumental sculptures, Mexico, Monument to
tion just a few. Mestization (1973), is one of the most visited by
As a sculptress, she has handled everything from tourists on the Heroes Walk in Mexico’s border
small works to monumental urban sculpture with city of Tijuana.
the same strength and intention, with the same I do not know if all sculptors ultimately want
power. Her large-scale works can be seen in Mex- their work to be part of the urban scenery, but it
ico City, in several places throughout the country seems to me that they do and that this desire can
and in some cities abroad. be traced back to the most ancient times of art,
When a sculptor takes on what is today called although it became stronger during the Italian
urban art, he or she is usually invited to do so by Renaissance. We should remember the immense
an architect, an urban planner or a government sculptures in Asian countries and in India, which,
official, who commissions the work to celebrate although their creators’ names have been lost in
a historical figure or commemorate an event. For anonymity, forcefully remind us of their religions
example, in 1967, the architect Pedro Ramírez through the monumental representations of their
Vázquez, president of the Organizing Commit- gods and elephants and all manner of animals
tee of Mexico City’s 1968 Olympic Games, con- with religious connotations.
ceived of the creation of the Route of Friendship Like in everything, there is both good and bad:
as an activity parallel to the preparations, inviting there are visual proposals and what I would call
sculptor Mathias Goeritz to head up the project. “impositions,” that in most cases have political
Goeritz, in turn, called on a large group
of Mexican and foreign sculptors to
create the route leading to the dif-
ferent sites where sporting events
would be held. Ángela marked
the beginning of that mag-
nificent one-of-a-kind route
with the black and white
sculpture called Signal,
which today, 36 years after
its creation, continues to
be a paradigm of contem-
porary art.
Ángela also paid homage
to the workers of Cutzama-
la, the hydraulic system that
supplies Mexico City with
drinking water, with a work
called Magic Heart, sculpted
from 1985 to 1987 on a moun-
tainside. According to Ángela, in
her homage to the workers of the
Tenayuca, State of Mexico, deep drain-
age system from 1974-1975, “The only
thing I did [sic] was to take enormous tubes, cut Chorus (Children Singing), 190 x 222 x 10.5 cm, ca. 1980 (steel). Private collection.

41
 Desert pieces.

Ángela Gurría has used the world around her; nature

is reflected and recreated in most of her artistic endeavors.

traits or connotations. Other sculptures by well- models— “wait” to be turned into large-scaled
known artists have been displayed throughout works because they are originally conceived in a
the world, gracing cities and becoming national perfectly proportioned way in case they are some-
symbols. day turned into monumental sculptures for an
In any case, good large-scale urban art is in- urban space.
variably linked to architects and visionary urban By this, I do not mean, of course, that all sculp-
planners who feel the need to integrate sculp- tures are conceived of as models for a larger
tures in specific spaces: they are the ones who work; sculptors will always have creations that
commission them. were determined by the size of the stone or piece
Sculptors usually work in small to medium sizes, of wood, for example. A piece of marble or stone
on the one hand due to the space available in may languish a long time in a corner of the ar-
their workshops, which cannot always accommo- tist’s workshop until he or she finds the appro-
date large pieces, and on the other hand for eco- priate theme for the material. According to Gurría,
nomic reasons. It is no exaggeration to think that this is the case of several of the sculptures that
many sculptures —usually called sketches or make up the exhibit “Ángela Gurría: Nature Ex-

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Mouse, 45 x 35 x 104 cm, no date (directly carved in stone). FONCA Collection at Landscape, 63 x 92 x 64 cm, 1981 (stainless steel). Academy of Arts Collection.
the Yucatán Athenian Contemporary Art Museum.

Snail with Quills, 90 x 130 x 60 cm, no date (iron sheeting). Private collection. Basilisk, 55 x 144 x 18 cm, ca. 1993 (bronze casting). Pape Library Museum,
San Antonio Field, Pape Foundation.

Animals acquire innumerable forms; we see them about to take flight

or cross a river, resting, lying in ambush or on guard.

alted,” such as The Watering Hole or The Noc- owls, birds, bulls and tortoises— acquire innu-
turnal Butterfly, both in red marble. Here, the merable forms or “moments”; we see them about
theme does not come first; instead, the sculptor to take flight or cross a river, resting, lying in
sooner or later conveys the theme “as the mater- ambush or on guard. Clouds or mountains have
ial requires.” The phrase says it all: apparently, also been turned into marble or stone, as have
the material “inspires” the sculptor, dictating the lagoons and human figures. The latter remind us
form. of time immemorial: are they Asian, Greek, from
But, let us return to the issue of nature in the some Mexican ethnic group? In fact, I would
case of Ángela Gurría. It is clear that the artist dare say that Ángela searches in her knowledge
has used the world around her, the world that about pre-Hispanic codices and gives free reign
concerns her; nature is reflected and recreated to her love for the vestiges and iconographies of
in most of her artistic endeavors. Cacti, whether this country’s ancestors. This is present in a large
umbelliferous or organ-shaped, and their flowers, part of her sculpture and not only in the human
are recreated in stone, marble and metal. Animals figure: we also identify it in her representation of
—tigers, butterflies, snails, frogs, mice, pigeons, death, where different materials and forms remind

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 Couple, 71 x 27 x 23.5 cm, ca. 1965 (stone). Private collection. Signal (station 1 of the Route of Friendship), 18 m, 1968 (cement).

us of tzompantlis, the rows of real or stone skulls so far as to say that even the abstracts remind us
found next to ancient temples. somehow of nature. It is, in short, nature exalted:
Trees are another motif in her sculptural quest, an inexhaustible source of subjects that Ángela
particularly the ceiba or silk-cotton tree that brings looks at and studies to turn them into tactile forms,
to mind the ancient and the religious connotation volumes of different shapes, in accordance with
attributed to it (one outstanding example is the the natural materials she uses in each case.
monumental piece, Ceiba, installed in the main The most recent selection of her work in Mex-
lobby of Mexico City’s Presidente Interconti- ico City’s Modern Art Museum, not conceived of as
nental Hotel in 1977). Water is another on-going a retrospective, is structured by the themes that
theme: rivers have never been left out of her con- she has dealt with throughout her long career.
stant dialogue with the elements of nature. Án- Pieces from very different times speak to us of
gela pays tribute to the Usumacinta River and an artist who repeatedly comes back to her motifs
also to watering holes. because, far from using them up, each time she
But Ángela does not limit herself to her trib- returns, she offers both a more comprehensive
ute to the elements. Traditional Mexican toys from and playful focus, always revealing the personal,
Metepec in the State of Mexico, known and rec- unequaled nature of her artistic endeavor.
ognized for its artisans’ majestic use of clay for
hundreds of years, are also the subject of homage
for the artist: magnificent trees of life, full of col-
or and Biblical or humdrum stories, little horses,
mermaids, flowers, shuttlecocks and much more. NOTES
When invited to fill the Paseo Tollocan, the ma-
jestic avenue leading to the city of Toluca, Ángela 1 This article is an extract from the catalogue Ángela Gurría:
recreated some of these toys in stone, distribut- Naturaleza exaltada (Ángela Gurría: Nature Exalted), pub-
lished by the National Fine Arts Institute, through the
ing them along the thoroughfare.
Mexico City Modern Art Museum in December 2003.
The sky, the earth, mountains and water are
always present in Gurría’s sculptures. I would go 2 Personal interview with Ángela Gurría, 2003.

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