According to different versions, Antonio Ruiz "El Corcito" (The Little Deer1895-1964) painted this image for the play "Un día de estos... fantasía impolítica en tres actos" (One of these days... impolitic fantasy in three acts.), written by Rodolfo Usigli in 1953. It shows the figure of a white horse on which a star is perched and which is playing with a toad, both on a half green and half red background. The characters inhabit what appears to be a waving cloth—a flag—hanging from the same place as a ribbon on which the inscription can be read "Indolandia indivisa y libre.”
As historian James Oles has pointed out in Modern Art of Mexico. Andrés Blaisten Collection regarding the gouache version of this image that is part of the collection—dated 1958 and in which the toad is of a significantly larger scale—"There is no doubt that the post-revolutionary 'Indolandia' is in fact Mexico, hence the red, green and white of the flag.” He also adds that the flag was created based on the playwright's own description, who parodically portrays the intrigues in the upper echelons of power after the assassination of the president and the unexpected arrival in office of a minor politician whose character he names "El Ninguneado" (The Ignored One). "The symbolism of the flag -adds Oles- is not clear, but the toad -which bears a striking resemblance to Diego Rivera's caricatures of himself- could be the hapless 'nobody' capable of scaring the most pompous authorities, even though he may end up crushed by a random foot.”
As art historian Rita Eder has pointed out in her doctoral research on Antonio Ruiz, the artist offered images during the 1930s and 1940s that did not assimilate the grandiloquence typical of the Mexican School of Painting. On the other hand, he constructed representations that posed other symbolic plots in contrast to his mythification of history. In this sense, the image that concerns us, although it dialogues with the work of a playwright and results from his production for the scenographic field, offers from a parodic viewpoint a symbolic universe inscribed in post-war Mexico, where the discourses of post-revolutionary Mexico begin to face attrition in public life.
It is possible to place the date of conception of this piece in the first half of the 1950s, based on the theatrical premiere of Usigli's play. According to a poster published in the virtual collection of the Miguel de Cervantes Library, the premiere took place in 1954 at the Esperanza Iris Theater, starring and directed by Alfredo Gómez de la Vega. In the credits of the poster, the sketch of the curtain with the Indolandia coat of arms is attributed to the artist Antonio Ruiz.
A week after the premiere, theater critic Armando de Maria y Campos wrote the following about the story in the newspaper Novedades: "Who is this president? Who are those exes? Who is he trying to show off when he talks about the president of the Single Party?... Each of these characters has a lot of this politician, that one or the other: this one says what that one did; and that one pronounces phrases that were never heard during his government. What difference does it make if one says what the other says, if what they all say is what they all said in their day and time! And is the president of Indolandia this one, or not this one, or that one?" In the closing of his text, the critic referred in this way to the flag of that nation imagined by Usigli and visualized by Ruiz in this parodic image: "To open and close the piece, Antonio Ruiz painted a magnificent curtain with the coat of arms of the supposed Indolandia.”
CGV- January, 2021
References:
https://museoblaisten.com/Obra/2568/Dibujo-preparatorio-Indolandia-indivisa-y-libre
https://museoblaisten.com/Obra/2570/Indolandia-indivisa-y-libre
Poster:
http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/portales/rodolfo_usigli/imagenes_representaciones/imagen/imagenes_representaciones_04_usigli_undiadeestos/
http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/rodolfo-usigli-ensayista-poeta-narrador-y-dramaturgo-0/html/8691abf4-6e2e-4b14-9cb9-adb4accc4309_14.html
Critics' reference:
Armando de Maria y Campos, “Estreno de Un día de estos... de Rodolfo Usigli, dirigida y actuada por Alfredo Gómez de la Vega” (Premiere of One of these days... by Rodolfo Usigli, directed and acted by Alfredo Gómez de la Vega), in Novedades, January 15, 1954.
http://criticateatral2021.org/html/resultado_bd.php?ID=1054&BUSQ=un%20d%C3%ADa%20de%20estos
The same text in the Theatrical Critics' Information System:
http://criticateatral2021.org/transcripciones/1054_540115.php
Sobre el autor:
https://citru.inba.gob.mx/proyectos/exposiciones/armandodemariaycampos/salas/sala2-teatro/cronista-cr%C3%ADtico/
Eder, Rita, Narraciones: pequeñas historias y grandes relatos en la pintura de Antonio Ruiz de los años 1935-1949, Tesis de doctorado en Historia del Arte (Narrations: small stories and big s in Antonio Ruiz's painting from 1935-1949, PhD thesis in Art History), IIE-FFyL, UNAM, Mexico, 2012.
