La Jornada: Marginal Redemptions vindicates the artistic legacy of Marysole Wörner

The Museum of Modern Art (MAM) has settled a “historical debt” with the exhibition Marysole Wörner Baz: Marginal Redemptions.

Its curator, Carlos Segoviano, remembers that in 1978 the then director, Fernando Gamboa, organized the first individual exhibition of the Mexican painter and sculpture Marysole Wörner Baz (1936-2014) at the venue.

During the brief tenure of architect Luis Ortiz Maceda as head of the MAM, between 1989 and 1990, he agreed with the artist to organize an individual exhibition; However, her successor in office, Teresa del Conde, preferred to coordinate a collective that would reflect the artistic lineage of the Wörner-Baz families.

The exhibition Inheritance and creation (1991) included the work, above all, of Marysole Wörner’s uncles, Ben Hur and Emilio Baz Viaud, but also of her brother, the architect Juan Wörner Baz; his mother, María Soledad Baz Viaud, and Marysole herself. The artist’s individual exhibition was pending.

On a personal level, Segoviano met Marysole shortly before his death because he was preparing a master’s thesis on Emilio Baz Viaud. “Among the talks and jokes we made, he would say: ‘it’s good that you liked my uncle’s work, but I would like you to write and give me an exhibition one day.’ At that time I was simply a student; however, that desire remained marked in me.”

He observes that Marysole Wörner’s work went “against the current, to the extent that she made figurative expressionism when most artists were into abstraction. When she returned to figuration she made a semi-abstract landscape; then, she always felt a lack of attention towards her work.”

Marginal redemptions It is mainly integrated with pieces that the artist herself donated to the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature, as well as with work from the Payment in Kind Program of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit and the recent donation to the MAM of the archive of the critic and curator Graciela Kartofel (1945-2022), from her widower Mario Rodenstein. Kartofel organized several exhibitions for Marysole Wörner and wrote about her other exhibitions. There is also work from the collection of Ernesto Arnaux.

Kartofel’s is a wide collection of catalogues, not only of Marysole Wörner, but of other artists with whom Kartofel was linked. Segoviano emphasizes two watercolors exhibited in the exhibition with a “double view” because they have a dedication from the artist on the back.

For the curator, Marysole Wörner Baz emerges as an “exceptional figure in the history of Mexican art.” In the beginning she was considered a “child prodigy”. Self-taught, he consolidated “one of the most unique trajectories of the second half of the 20th century.” His work had early encouragement from critics Margarita Nelken and Jorge Juan Crespo de la Serna. He cultivated complicities with artists such as Remedios Varo.

However, “although his artistic legacy is part of important public and private collections, it has not been fully recognized and valued,” says the researcher.

Marginal redemptions It includes more than 70 pieces, including painting, sculpture, engraving and the documentary collection. In his early years his production was dominated by a dark, even dark palette, populated by tormented and disconsolate beings. After a deep personal crisis, his painting transitioned towards colorful and vibrant images, in which the protagonists are the mountains, nature, rain and fog, as can be seen in The cradle of wind, from the series Wind (1990), y Fog, from the series Grasses and mists (1982).

His sculptures are made of both metal and wood. He also made leather-covered notebooks, such as Meeting book (2008).

Marginal redemptions It will remain until October 25 at the Museum of Modern Art (Paseo de la Reforma, Gandhi corner, first section of Bosque de Chapultepec).