Washerwomen - RODIG PIZARRO (1901-1972)

An oil on canvas measuring 61 x 50 cm depicting washerwomen, signed lower right by Laura Rodig Pizarro (1901-1972), circa 1928
Close to avant-garde circles, Laura Rodig is one of the greatest Chilean artists of the 20th century. In 1914, she met Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), a poet, feminist philosopher, and influential Chilean diplomat, with whom she always maintained a close friendship and philosophical connection. The feminist cause, education, and the status of women, primarily in Latin America and particularly in her own country, Chile, would always be a guiding principle in Laura Rodig's work. Between 1922 and 1924, she created the Tipos Mexicanos series following a stay in Mexico with Gabriela Mistral and José Vasconcelos. Between 1924 and 1930, she traveled to Europe and exhibited both her sculptures and her paintings. She was the first Latin American woman to enter the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid in 1924 with her sculpture India Mexicana. In 1928, at the Salon d'Automne in Paris, she exhibited what is probably her major work, particularly due to its size (130 x 162 cm), La Fuente y sus Mujeres, currently in the Collection of the Palacio Quinta Vergara Museum of Fine Arts in Chile. Our work fits perfectly into this period. It is part of this artistic avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, having rubbed shoulders with Frida Kahlo in Latin America and exhibited in Europe. In the 1930s, back in Chile, she continued her feminist commitment and her communist activism. She attached great importance to the education of women. She participated in the founding of the Association of Chilean Painters and Sculptors, was involved in exhibitions of female artists and devoted her energy to the education, particularly artistic, of women and worked for their emancipation. A major retrospective was dedicated to her in 2020, at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Chile, in Santiago.