Margarita Azurdia, born in 1931 to a Catalonian mother and Guatemalan father, rejected the restraints of conservative society to develop an interdisciplinary practice, reclaiming space for feminine and Indigenous cosmologies observed in her native Guatemala. Untitled (1968) belongs to the series Pinturas geométricas (Geometric paintings), which Azurdia painted in the decade after travelling alone to California to study welding and modern art. Borrowing from Op Art, Colour Field painting, and geometric abstraction, the diamond composition characteristic of Azurdia’s Geométricas is built up in sharply delineated fields of flat colour. Although these works became amongst her best known, they were immediately implicated in a debate that polarised the Guatemalan art world. Torn between socially engaged “new figuration” and geometric abstraction, whose internationalism was tainted in a Cold War context, many criticised Azurdia as, at best, apolitical. The lozenge shapes and unusual combinations of solid colour that recur in this series make reference, however, to Indigenous Maya huipils (woven shawls), which were designed, created, and worn by women. Interweaving modernist painting with a tradition of Indigenous women’s labour and performativity, Azurdia’s painting presents an alternative politic.
This is the first time the work of Margarita Azurdia is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Lucia Neirotti
