Joy Laville

Untitled

1989

Joy Laville was born in England in 1923, but always called herself a Mexican painter. Though she demonstrated a talent for art in childhood and took art classes throughout her early life, her art career really began in Mexico when she studied art formally at the Instituto Allende. She developed a unique style that primarily consisted of pastel colors with a reflective, sensuous quality and had her first exhibition in Mexico City in 1964. That same year she met the writer Jorge Ibargüengoitia, whom she married in 1973. In 1966 she won an acquisition prize at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, where she exhibited again in 1968 and 1985. In 1974 she exhibited at the Museo de Arte Moderno and was the subject of a major retrospective there in 2004. When Ibargüengoitia died in a plane crash in 1983, Laville changed the focus of her work to themes of finality and eternity. She received the Bellas Artes Medal for her life’s work in 2012 and died in 2018. Her work can be found in the collections of the Dallas Museum in Texas, and the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.