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Blind Alleys. Always the rebel, Cuevas rather grandly refuses to associate himself with any group, even the interioristas. But his mark and leadership are there nonetheless. "Mexican art was at a dead end. Now we are free," he said, and the other interioristas enthusiastically agree. Canadian-born Arnold Belkin. 32, one of the co-authors of the manifesto, says that Rivera, chiefly significant as a social-protest painter, had the byproduct effect of leading Mexican art "up a blind alley —two generations of picturesque Indians making tortillas or setting out candles for the Night of the Dead." When abstraction invaded the country, it turned out to be another false trail. "Mexican gallery-goers began to accept 'action painting' as the expression of our times 20 years after the battle had been fought out in New York, Paris, and Rome."
The Insiders' work ranges from the violent canvases of Leonel Gongora, 30, to the near fantasies of Emilio Ortiz, 28, to the fleshy, bulbous creatures of Artemio Sepulveda, 27, to Francisco Corzas' fascination with hallucinations as "universal themes." Throughout the work, the palette is muted; Francisco Icaza, 32, argues that "reducing color makes form clearer." The results are uneven, occasionally repellent; but there is always a stark force about the Insiders that reaches out to the heart as well as the eye. Jose Mufioz, who at 34 is senior member of the group, explains his own anguished figures with a touch of poetry. "I am interested in finding the smile of a child, tenderness, the most human emotions. What I am painting now is those conditions which prevent these emotions. I am painting a cry of protest. It might cause people to feel a little more pity."
* They have recently been taken on by Manhattan's Cober Gallery.