Geles Cabrera, Trailblazing Mexican Sculptor, Dies At 100

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Mexican artist Geles Cabrera, recognized as the country's first professional female sculptor and associated with the Generación de la Ruptura (Breakaway Generation), passed away on September 1 at the age of 100. Her death was initially reported by the Spanish magazine Bonart, and later announced by Mexico City's National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) earlier this month, an institution that previously hailed her as a“tireless promoter” for younger generations of Mexican artists.

Over seven decades, Cabrera cultivated a sculptural practice that explored the human figure through abstract, voluptuous forms, frequently utilizing rough volcanic stone. OMR gallery in Mexico City, which collaborated with the artist, stated,“It is with deep sadness that we pay tribute to Geles Cabrera... a pioneer of modern sculpture in Mexico and an artist whose work transformed the way we think about the body, movement, and space. She was both an artist and her own muse. She didn't wait for the world to make a place for her, she shaped it with her own hands.”

Born as Ángeles María Cabrera Alvarado in 1926, Cabrera's father, a civil engineer, oversaw new building projects in Mexico City and participated in archaeological excavations of pre-Hispanic artifacts. The ancient sculptures he uncovered profoundly influenced Cabrera, whose art incorporated forms reminiscent of pagan rituals and prehistoric objects. Her aunt, Rosario Cabrera, was also an artist who directed Open-Air Painting Schools. In the 1940s, Cabrera attended Mexico's San Carlos Academy and dance school, joining Alfonso Pallares's experimental troupe. Her experience in dance inspired her strong, dancer-like figurative sculptures, which often evoked fertility or depicted merged couples.

When Cabrera began her career, few women in Mexico were taken seriously as artists, and sculpture was predominantly a male domain. Despite early recognition, including becoming the first Mexican sculptor to hold a solo show at the Mont-Orendáin Gallery at age 22 in 1949, major institutions largely overlooked her pioneering work until much later in her life. She recounted in a 2018 filmed interview with artist Pedro Reyes for her solo exhibition“Geles Cabrera: Mexico's First Female Sculptor” at Mexico City's Museo Experimental El Eco,“They wouldn't let women in. It was so hard to achieve anything. They built museums for all the [male] artists, but they never supported me. Tell me the Mexican art system isn't sexist, of course it is.”

Cabrera, a mother of five, overcame many sexist barriers and actively supported other artists. In 1949, she co-founded the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana with 52 other artists to promote modern Mexican art. In 1966, she established the Museo Escultórico in Coyoacán, Mexico's first independent artist-run museum by a living artist, which operated until 2006. The museum offered free admission, and Cabrera personally funded it with her salary as an art teacher. It featured contemporary sculptors and permanently displayed over 50 of her own pieces.

During her 20s, Cabrera's family relocated to Cuba, where she enrolled in the San Alejandro Academy, began exhibiting, and won two awards. Upon returning to Mexico City in 1949, she continued her studies at La Esmeralda School of Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving. Around that time, she expanded beyond terracotta, experimenting with materials like wood, plant fibers, and bronze, particularly her distinctive black or gray porous volcanic stone, recinto, also used in Indigenous buildings. This material imparted a raw quality, complementing the sensual curves of her figures. Cabrera told Reyes,“I left them like that on purpose. I don't like to polish them. That is why I barely ever worked with marble.”

Cabrera's abstract tendencies, which diverged from the nationalist motifs prevalent among Mexican muralists, aligned her with the Generación de la Ruptura movement starting in the 1950s. According to The Art Newspaper, she also joined the GUCADIGOSE avant-garde collective with Angela Gurría and Mathias Goeritz, among others.

In her later years, museum exhibitions began to acknowledge her contributions. In 2022, she had her first solo show in the US at the Americas Society in New York. In 2023, she received Mexico's highest honor for lifetime artistic achievements, the Medal for Fine Arts. A retrospective at Mexico City's Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes is scheduled for 2025. Many viewed her late-career recognition as a testament to the perseverance required for female artists to receive due appreciation for their work.

We previously reported:

The art world mourns the recent passing of seven influential figures, including sculptors, photographers, and philanthropists.

Source: ARTnews

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