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Rina Lazo
Rina Lazo Wasem (October 23, 1923 – November 1, 2019) was a Guatemalan-Mexican painter. She began her career in mural painting with Diego Rivera as his assistant. She worked with him from 1947 until his death in 1957 on projects both in Mexico and Guatemala. Thereafter, she remained an active painter, better known for her mural works than canvases, although the latter have been exhibited in Mexico and other countries. This has made her one of Guatemala's best-known artists. She was a member of the Mexican muralism movement and criticized modern artists as too commercial and not committed to social causes. She believed muralism would revive in Mexico because of its historical value.
Rina Lazo was born on October 23, 1923, in Guatemala City to Arturo Lazo and Melanea Wasern. She attended primary through high school at the Colegio Alemán. She spent her childhood in Cobán, where she had contact with local Mayan peoples, which would later have an impact on her art.
Lazo began her art studies at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in Guatemala City in the early 1940s. (Today this school is called Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas "Rafael Rodríguez Padilla".) There she worked as an assistant to Julio Urruela painting murals at Guatemala's National Palace. In 1945, she won a scholarship from then President Arévalo to study art in Mexico, at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda". She stated this is why she left the country, not the revolution that was taking place at the time. At the school, she studied with Carlos Orozco Romero, Jesús Guerrero Galván, Alfredo Zalce, Federico Cantú and Manuel Rodríguez Lozano but quickly became a favorite student of Diego Rivera, who she called her best teacher. She met Frida Kahlo at her and Rivera's home in Coyoacán, where she was invited to eat. She did not like spicy food, but Rivera told her she needed to learn how to appreciate chili peppers to appreciate Mexico.
Lazo married Mexican artist Arturo Garcia Bustos in 1949. Their home was said to be a residence of La Malinche, and was later a monastery, prison, and hospital. In 2006, after living there for more than forty years, they opened part of the ground floor to house the Galería de la Casa Colorada. This gallery is run by their daughter, Rina García Lazo who is an architect. Lazo said that the house and the surrounding neighborhood inspired both of them for its history and the legends associated with it.
Her early artistic, social and political life was strongly tied with that of Rivera and Kahlo, and she became a militant supporter of the Mexican Communist Party.
Lazo's art career began soon after she arrived to La Esmeralda, when Diego Rivera hired her as an assistant. Her first collaboration with him was in 1947, on the mural called Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central for the Hotel del Prado. Rivera called her his “right hand” and “the best of his students.”
From then until his death in 1957, she worked with him on a number of murals, which led her career to be mostly in mural painting. These projects included murals done at the Cáracamo del Río Lerma in Chapultepec titled El agua, origen de la vida sobre la tierra (1951), the natural stone mural at the Olympic Stadium at Ciudad Universitaria (1952), two at the Hospital La Raza, El pueblo en demanda de salud and Historia de la medicine en México (1953), and one in Guatemala, La gloriosa victoria (1954) at the Palacio Nacional de Cultura. The last one depicts the coup which ousted Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz, in which blame is cast on the United States. Lazo herself appears in this mural as a young guerilla fighter in a bright red blouse.
In addition to working with Rivera, Lazo executed a number of her own mural projects over the course of her career. She produced frescos, murals in vinyl and stucco in Guatemala City and various locations in Mexico. Before she married, she created a mural at the Escuela Rural de Temixco with the aim of getting the Communist Party recognized in the state of Morelos. Her next mural was Tierra fertile (1954), based on scenes from the Tikal area at the Museo de la Universidad de San Carlos in Guatemala. Another mural she created in Guatemala is Venceremos (1959), which later the Guatemalan government would honor along with other murals.
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Rina Lazo
Rina Lazo Wasem (October 23, 1923 – November 1, 2019) was a Guatemalan-Mexican painter. She began her career in mural painting with Diego Rivera as his assistant. She worked with him from 1947 until his death in 1957 on projects both in Mexico and Guatemala. Thereafter, she remained an active painter, better known for her mural works than canvases, although the latter have been exhibited in Mexico and other countries. This has made her one of Guatemala's best-known artists. She was a member of the Mexican muralism movement and criticized modern artists as too commercial and not committed to social causes. She believed muralism would revive in Mexico because of its historical value.
Rina Lazo was born on October 23, 1923, in Guatemala City to Arturo Lazo and Melanea Wasern. She attended primary through high school at the Colegio Alemán. She spent her childhood in Cobán, where she had contact with local Mayan peoples, which would later have an impact on her art.
Lazo began her art studies at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in Guatemala City in the early 1940s. (Today this school is called Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas "Rafael Rodríguez Padilla".) There she worked as an assistant to Julio Urruela painting murals at Guatemala's National Palace. In 1945, she won a scholarship from then President Arévalo to study art in Mexico, at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda". She stated this is why she left the country, not the revolution that was taking place at the time. At the school, she studied with Carlos Orozco Romero, Jesús Guerrero Galván, Alfredo Zalce, Federico Cantú and Manuel Rodríguez Lozano but quickly became a favorite student of Diego Rivera, who she called her best teacher. She met Frida Kahlo at her and Rivera's home in Coyoacán, where she was invited to eat. She did not like spicy food, but Rivera told her she needed to learn how to appreciate chili peppers to appreciate Mexico.
Lazo married Mexican artist Arturo Garcia Bustos in 1949. Their home was said to be a residence of La Malinche, and was later a monastery, prison, and hospital. In 2006, after living there for more than forty years, they opened part of the ground floor to house the Galería de la Casa Colorada. This gallery is run by their daughter, Rina García Lazo who is an architect. Lazo said that the house and the surrounding neighborhood inspired both of them for its history and the legends associated with it.
Her early artistic, social and political life was strongly tied with that of Rivera and Kahlo, and she became a militant supporter of the Mexican Communist Party.
Lazo's art career began soon after she arrived to La Esmeralda, when Diego Rivera hired her as an assistant. Her first collaboration with him was in 1947, on the mural called Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central for the Hotel del Prado. Rivera called her his “right hand” and “the best of his students.”
From then until his death in 1957, she worked with him on a number of murals, which led her career to be mostly in mural painting. These projects included murals done at the Cáracamo del Río Lerma in Chapultepec titled El agua, origen de la vida sobre la tierra (1951), the natural stone mural at the Olympic Stadium at Ciudad Universitaria (1952), two at the Hospital La Raza, El pueblo en demanda de salud and Historia de la medicine en México (1953), and one in Guatemala, La gloriosa victoria (1954) at the Palacio Nacional de Cultura. The last one depicts the coup which ousted Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz, in which blame is cast on the United States. Lazo herself appears in this mural as a young guerilla fighter in a bright red blouse.
In addition to working with Rivera, Lazo executed a number of her own mural projects over the course of her career. She produced frescos, murals in vinyl and stucco in Guatemala City and various locations in Mexico. Before she married, she created a mural at the Escuela Rural de Temixco with the aim of getting the Communist Party recognized in the state of Morelos. Her next mural was Tierra fertile (1954), based on scenes from the Tikal area at the Museo de la Universidad de San Carlos in Guatemala. Another mural she created in Guatemala is Venceremos (1959), which later the Guatemalan government would honor along with other murals.
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