Ángela Gurría (Mexico City, 1929-2023) was a pioneering artist who played a fundamental role in shaping modern sculpture within 20th-century Mexican art, facilitating its transition into contemporary forms. Just over a year after her passing, this exhibition pays tribute to her legacy, highlighting the subtle, silent, and almost invisible strategies that allowed her to maintain a critical attitude toward the world and the time she lived in. Her work, marked by a profound humanistic sense and ecological concerns, is characterized by an encrypted iconography inspired by both Mesoamerican and European art.
As a forerunner in an artistic practice long reserved for men, Ángela Gurría adopted male pseudonyms such as Ángel Gurría or Alberto Urías in her early years to avoid discrimination in sculpture competitions. Despite her work being recognized with numerous awards, it is paradoxical that her art remains almost unknown to the public today.
For Gurría, the spiritual was the driving force behind her work, a volatile appearance with creative power that, in its apparent simplicity, reveals a deep meaning about the human essence. The exhibition is organized around four curatorial themes, offering a sensory, non-chronological journey through some of the artist’s central themes: the female body, landscape, death, and nature.
Ángela Gurría. Signals is an exhibition that, in addition to recognizing the extensive career of an innovative artist in the field of sculpture in Mexico, seeks to rediscover and revalue her impact on contemporary art through a deep review of her work, expressed in ideas, manuscripts, drawings, projects, and sculptures in small, medium, and large formats, as well as her monumental works for public spaces. All of them evidence the freedom and affirmation of her practice as one of the most influential female sculptors of the 20th century.
The representation of female bodies was a constant in Ángela Gurría’s work. Through different perspectives, these figures reveal recurring themes in her art: rhythm, duality, gesture, eroticism, and embodiment. Many of the bodies appear faceless, turning their gestures into an enigma, inviting the viewer to engage in a more personal interpretation.
Gurría initially trained with Germán Cueto, a sculptor associated with the Estridentismo movement, and later with Abraham González and Mario Zamora. Throughout her career, she worked indistinctly from either an abstract or figurative approach, resolving her compositions through the synthesis of form. The simplicity of her lines, the detailed handling of volumes, and her mastery of sculpting materials are characteristic elements that consistently developed throughout her work.
In 1959, Gurría held her first solo exhibition at Galería Diana, where she previewed some of the themes she would explore later in her career. One of the standout pieces, Niño midiendo su universo (1959), depicts the faceless body of a child, whose attention is focused on a seashell in his left hand, while in his right hand, he holds a compass as if measuring it. The seashell, with its spiral, represents nature and the concept of time; it is a symbol of origin and the force that keeps the universe in motion. Years later, Gurría would reflect: «My work is ever-changing, dispersed, though it always remains the same thing: the spiral of life.»
The word «landscape» generally refers to an expanse of terrain, the depiction of a scene, or a genre in art history. However, Ángela Gurría’s sculptures could be understood primarily as «non-landscapes.» Created from conventional materials but constructed through assemblages, found objects, drifts, and transpositions, Gurría began to explore this concept in versatile ways starting in the 1960s.
In 1965, she was commissioned to create the piece Familia obrera for a building of the Tabacalera Mexicana company, marking her first foray into public sculpture. Later in 1967, with the sculpture Puerta-Celosía designed for the Fábrica de Billetes del Banco de México, she won first prize in the category of Sculpture Integrated into Architecture at the Third Sculpture Biennale. In 1968, Ángela Gurría created the piece Señal for the Ruta de la Amistad, a project conceived by Mathias Goeritz and Pedro Ramírez Vázquez. This work, perhaps one of her most well-known internationally, marked the starting point for working on monumental sculptures, redefining a new paradigm for public art.
In her speech when she became the first woman to join the Academy of Arts in 1974, Gurría stated: «I define sculpture as an idea that uses form as the starting point for its own development and space as the element in which the geometry of that idea is expressed.» This text stands as a manifesto for public art, accessible to the people, placed in spaces for the enjoyment of the masses without needing to be sought in museums or private venues. The artist describes how verticality, elasticity, and volume can generate a sense of harmony, challenging the use of technique, which she perceived as being in service of power rather than humanity.
For Gurría, the reciprocal play between form and space constituted the «magical dualism» that allowed the sculpture to emerge. In this tension between form and space, evident in her public projects such as Homenaje al trabajador del drenaje profundo (1974-1975), as well as in small- and medium-scale sculptures like Montaña (ca. 1973) or Tepozteco (1967-1968), lies the experimentation and contemporaneity of her work.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Ángela Gurría explored new thematic and technical dimensions in her sculptural work, focusing on death from a philosophical perspective and as a central theme. In 1983, Gurría presented the exhibition Flores de noviembre (variaciones) at Galería Arvil. This show included nine iron sculptures, which the artist affectionately called «my skulls.» The exhibition marked a turning point in her career as she began to address death more explicitly and personally. Reflecting on this transformation, Gurría remarked: «My message of life turned into a message of death, though I didn’t want it to. This exhibition is the rage, the sadness we chew.»
The sculptures from this period draw inspiration from both European and Mesoamerican iconography, reflecting a deep connection with these traditions. Works such as Espejito, espejito (1994) and Calaveras (2011), the latter displayed in a tzompantli, a pre-Hispanic structure used to exhibit skulls, stand out in her oeuvre. Similarly, Xipe Tótec (1993), whose name means «our lord the flayed one,» references a Mexica god associated with the cycle of life and death.
A standout piece from this period is La muerte en Chiapas (1995-1997), inspired by Pedro Valtierra’s iconic photograph showing a woman confronting a soldier with the strength of her arms. This work by Gurría alludes to the Zapatista uprising that began in Chiapas in 1994, depicting two jaguars symbolizing the duality of life and death, a recurring theme in her work.
This period is crucial for understanding the transformations in Gurría’s artistic language and her deep reflection on existential and social issues. Her ability to integrate iconographies from diverse cultural contexts and employ both figurative and abstract strategies reflects her constant dynamism and her role as one of Mexico’s most important 20th-century sculptors.
Ángela Gurría was a pioneer of ecological awareness in 20th-century Mexican art. In her sculptures, she reinterprets the symbolic language of nature through the material, opposing the technification of the world. This section, organized around the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire, uses the concept of the garden as a display device to showcase sculptures that explore the relationship between humans and nature.
Among the works presented is Dialéctica (Flor del Desierto) (1960), one of Gurría’s earliest pieces addressing the representation of the vegetal world, specifically desert flora. The spiked forms and geometric lines maintain a balance between abstraction and figuration, reflecting the influence of Germán Cueto. Also included is a set of works created in 1993 for the exhibition Homenaje al desierto at Museo Pape in Monclova, Coahuila, where Gurría worked with bronze, stone, marble, and steel, focusing on cacti, some of which are on display here. At the center of the room, Isla Contoy (1976) presents a group of birds seemingly about to take flight, while in El aguaje (2002-2003), the landscape reveals cattle approaching to drink water.
Gurría’s work remains critically relevant today. This section highlights her humanistic vision, where the material and the spiritual intertwine, creating forms that, while occupying physical space, evoke nature in its symbolic dimension.
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Ángela Gurría was one of Mexico’s most prominent artists of the 20th century. While many of her monumental sculptures, such as Señal on the Ruta de la Amistad in southern Mexico City, are part of the urban landscape we see every day, her work remains relatively unknown to the general public. The Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes presents the sculpture Contoy III on this esplanade as part of the exhibition Ángela Gurría. Signals.
Contoy III, made from cut and welded iron plates, was first exhibited in 1974 at the Museo de Arte Moderno in the exhibition Contoy. Isla del Caribe. This exhibition featured several pieces inspired by the landscapes of a Mexican island in the Caribbean. In Contoy III, Gurría created an upward composition, repeating the silhouette of a bird to suggest a flock in flight.
This sculpture is an abstract representation of a landscape, a theme Gurría began to explore with great creativity in the 1960s. She was always committed to the idea of public and accessible art, wishing for her works to be enjoyed outdoors, not only in museums or private collections.
We invite you to explore more about her work by visiting the exhibition in the National and Diego Rivera galleries, where you can learn more about the creative process of this great artist.
