EXICO
CITY, Feb. 5 — Rodolfo Morales, whose surreal paintings of rural
Mexican culture won acclaim around the world, died last Tuesday
in Oaxaca. He was 75.
He was being treated for pancreatic cancer, according to news
reports in Mexico.
Mr. Morales was born in 1925 in a small Indian village in
Oaxaca, and although he traveled extensively around Europe and
Latin America, most of his art was inspired by dreamlike
memories of his native land. Many of his paintings are
primitive, with subjects — mostly women — whose oversize faces
do not correspond with their small feet and hands. The warmth
and color of his work spin the mundane toils of a peasant
village into magical scenes whose images include brides on
bicycles, dancing angels and puppies with human expressions.
Mr. Morales often said that he did not like to talk about the
meaning of his paintings but that he derived great satisfaction
from watching others find something of themselves in his
mystical settings.
"I try not to repeat myself," he said last year in an
interview with the Mexican newspaper Reforma, "but all I do is
paint from the time I get up until the time I lie down."
A mild-mannered man with expressive eyes and a gentle voice,
Mr. Morales recalled growing up as a solitary child, picked on
by other children, he said, because he was "different" and liked
to draw. At 23, he moved to Mexico City to study art at the
Academy of San Carlos and then began a 32-year career as a high
school art teacher.
For extra money, he organized exhibitions of his work in
small galleries around the capital. In 1975, when he was
approaching 50, his paintings were noticed by Rufino Tamayo, the
dean of Oaxacan painters. Mr. Tamayo helped Mr. Morales make
contacts with art critics and gallery owners around the world.
The two artists, along with Francisco Toledo, became a kind of
triumvirate of masters whose work made Oaxaca an internationally
renowned center for contemporary art.
Mr. Morales was commissioned for various government and
corporate projects, and his work was shown in individual
exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the world. Some
critics dismissed his art as stale and folksy but most praised
him as an imaginative and generous spirit.
Mr. Morales said that fame frightened him in many ways.
"Many critics speak too much of young artists with such
success that it sends them right to the grave," he said in the
interview with Reforma. "Painters are poor and by earning
thousands of dollars, they become drunk until they die."
In the late 1980's, Mr. Morales had finally earned enough to
quit teaching, move back to Oaxaca and dedicate himself full
time to his art. He created a foundation devoted to restoring
the battered monuments of his dusty hometown, Ocotlan. He helped
restore the 16th-century Convent of Santo Domingo and a 17th-
century church in the town of Santa Ana Zegache.
"I came here to live in my memories," Mr. Morales said in a
1995 interview. "Nostalgia and melancholy are very important to
me."
In an effort to promote art and culture in Oaxaca, Mr.
Morales's foundation has organized workshops, provided materials
to aspiring artists and planted thousands of new copal trees
that not only give life to the barren landscape but also provide
wood for the creation of the fantastical hand-painted animals
known in Mexico as alebrijes.
He leaves no immediate survivors.
Last year he celebrated his 50th anniversary as an artist
with a retrospective of more than 100 pieces at the Contemporary
Museum of Art in Oaxaca. Two books about him were also published
last year, including a biography whose title is loosely
translated as "The Man of Dreams."
