This landscape includes a panoramic perspective of southeast of the Valley of Mexico from an elevated site to the south of it, possibly the town of San Miguel Topilejo, on the road to Cuernavaca. In the distance the profile of the mountains can be made out where at the far right the Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl volcanoes can be seen, as can the Tlaloc and Telapon toward the center. The snowy peak of Iztaccihuatl can be perceived without difficulty, while the cone of Popocatepetl almost melts, due to the atmospheric effect, into an overcast sky with white, long and thin clouds. Among the bluish peaks the Tehutli volcano can also be made out, located in the vicinity of Milpa Alta and the Sierra de Santa Catarina which frame the lake district of Xochimilco and Tláhuac. The foreground shows the hillsides that surround a fertile valley checkered by agricultural parcels. The vegetation is a display of rich colors: violet, purple and shades of blue and green, ocher and orange. With fast and expressive brushstrokes shrubs, grasses and wildflowers are depicted, while long strokes with a pictorial density form the mass of the mounds.
In the history of modern Mexican art, two landscape painters from the Valley of Mexico stand out: Jose Maria Velasco and Gerardo Murillo, Dr. Atl. Each one so different from the other yet similar in their pronounced scientific interest in nature and its phenomena, their conviction of painting in the field, and their fascination with the majestic Valley of Mexico and its volcanoes. It is significant to note the similarities of The view of the volcanoes from the road to Cuernavaca by Dr. Atl with the renowned The Valley of Mexico from the hills of Santa Isabel by Jose Maria Velasco, painted in 1877. Each painting shows the valley from two different points of view, even distant, but they share the search for a panoramic range that allows the gaze to apprehend a vast spatial extent, while expressing the notion of greatness inscribed in the nature of the central highlands.
In the case of Dr. Atl, he gives the landscape a spiritual dimension. In 1933 he wrote: “The representation of nature is one of the highest expressions of the human spirit”.[1] It is paradoxical to compare a landscape produced in 1958 with another which was made eighty years in the light of the career of the restless and versatile Dr. Atl, who by the end of the fifties had innovated the genre by using the curvilinear perspective -following the theoretical proposal of Luis G. Serrano from 1934- and the practice of aerial landscapes, which began in the fifties as a consequence of observations from flights in aircraft and helicopters.
This landscape adheres to a linear perspective with a vanishing point located deep in the horizon and the viewer is located in a high place, but not an aerial one. Dr. Atl deeply ired volcanoes, particularly Popocatepetl, which he had explored since 1905 in the company of his friend Joaquin Clausell. This volcano inspired numerous paintings and literary -Symphonies of Popocatepetl (1921)- and scientific writings. But it was the Paricutin, whose birth was seen in 1943 to which he dedicated years of work and research, and to which he conferred greater authority on the subject of volcanology.
[1]. Dr. Atl, “The landscape, essay 1933” in Saenz, Olga, The symbol and action. Life and works of Gerardo Murillo, Dr. Atl, Mexico, El Colegio Nacional, 2005, p. 610.
This landscape includes a panoramic perspective of southeast of the Valley of Mexico from an elevated site to the south of it, possibly the town of San Miguel Topilejo, on the road to Cuernavaca. In the distance the profile of the mountains can be made out where at the far right the Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl volcanoes can be seen, as can the Tlaloc and Telapon toward the center. The snowy peak of Iztaccihuatl can be perceived without difficulty, while the cone of Popocatepetl almost melts, due to the atmospheric effect, into an overcast sky with white, long and thin clouds. Among the bluish peaks the Tehutli volcano can also be made out, located in the vicinity of Milpa Alta and the Sierra de Santa Catarina which frame the lake district of Xochimilco and Tláhuac. The foreground shows the hillsides that surround a fertile valley checkered by agricultural parcels. The vegetation is a display of rich colors: violet, purple and shades of blue and green, ocher and orange. With fast and expressive brushstrokes shrubs, grasses and wildflowers are depicted, while long strokes with a pictorial density form the mass of the mounds.
