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Alice Rahon: Poetic Invocations
By Denise Colson
“Poetic Invocations,” curated by Teresa Arcq, features a selection of works by surrealist painter Alice Rahon (1904-1987). The exhibition is on view through March 29th at MOCA, North Miami. “We are very pleased to showcase the work of Alice Rahon, who was a major contributor to the Surrealist movement at MOCA North Miami,” said MOCA Executive Director Chana Budgazad Sheldon. “This exhibition aims to contribute to the scholarship and recognition of under-explored women artists.”
Alice Rahon, Madame Dimanche, circa 1955, oil on canvas, 69 ¼” x 45 5/8”. Private Collection.
Born in France and later nationalized as a Mexican, Rahon joined the Parisian Surrealist circle as a poet, but once in Mexico, she turned her creativity mainly to painting. She became an active a member of a group of European Surrealists artists in exile including Remedios Varo, Benjamin Péret, Leonora Carrington, Wolfgang Paalen, and Kati Horna, among others.
Alice Rahon, The Night at Tepoztlan, 1964, oil on canvas, 27 ½” x 34.” Collection of Dr. Enrique Sánchez Palomera.
Rahon’s production was a far cry from that of her contemporaries. She was drawn to light and color, and established a continuous dialogue between painting and poetry. Her creations brought together Mexican landscapes, myths, legends and fiestas, and she was a pioneer in the use of sand and texture on her canvases, which included subtle graffito markings. Her oeuvre has been overlooked for many years. Rahon along with painter Wolfgang Paalen (her first husband) contributed to the introduction of Abstract Expressionism in Mexico.
Alice Rahon, The Next Morning (The City of Ys), 1958, oil on canvas, 54 ½” x 86 ¾.” Collection of Frances and Don Baxter.
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“Alice Rahon is a key figure who built a timeless connection amongst cultural flows through the origin of a poetic and spiritual art,” said Arcq. “She achieved understanding art in its purest condition: like liberated and momentous beauty.”
Alice Rahon, From the series Crystals in Space, 1943, ink on paper, 9 ¾” x 6 ¼” Private Collection, Courtesy of Oscar Roman Gallery, Mexico.
“Poetic Invocations” marks the first solo show dedicated to Rahon’s work in the United States in 55 years since her exhibition at the Louisiana Gallery in Houston, Texas in 1964. The exhibition examines a robust art-historical moment that emerged in 1940 as an international community of artists fled World War II in Europe and settled in Mexico. It features approximately 30 works including paintings, works on paper, assemblages, as well as archival material such as the DYN journal for which she worked mainly as editor, original poems and manuscripts and photographs to put an emphasis on Rahon´s oeuvre as a whole. The exhibition explores five fundamental themes: art as poetic invocation, the power of the immemorial past, the journal that challenged limits, the volcano and the Mexican landscape and light: the dilution of inside and outside, and the metaphorical experience of the inside out: fiestas and popular art in Mexico.
Alice Rahon, A Flower for Angela (Tribute to Angela Davis), circa 1971-1972, mixed media on board, 21 5/8” x 13 ¾”. Collection of Olga Peeters.
Alice Rahon exhibited regularly in Mexico, New York and California and had solo shows in Paris and Lebanon. Her last solo exhibition took place in 1986 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, just a year before her death. In 2009, with the discovery of her archive, Teresa Arcq curated an Alice Rahon retrospective at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City and then at El Cubo in Tijuana.
“Poetic Invocations” will be on view through March 29, 2020. The Museum of Contemporary Art is located at 770 NE 125th St, North Miami, FL 33161 | www.mocanomi.org.
Denise Colson is an art critic and historian based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
