Joy Laville

Joy Laville (September 8, 1923 – April 13, 2018) was an English/Mexican artist whose art career began and mostly developed in Mexico when she came to the country to take art classes in San Miguel de Allende. While there she met Mexican writer Jorge Ibargüengoitia, whom she married in 1973. During this time her art career developed mostly in pastels with a reflective quality. In 1983, Ibargüengoitia died in a plane crash in Spain and Laville's painting changed dramatically. Since that time, her work has focused on the loss of her husband, directly or indirectly with themes of finality, eternity and wondering what more is there. Her work has been exhibited in Mexico and abroad including the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Museo de Arte Moderno. In 2012, she received the Bellas Artes Medal for her life's work.

Life

Joy Laville was born in Ryde on the Isle of Wight . Her father was Francis Laville, a captain in the Indian Army of the Seventh Rajput Regiment. As a child she took ballet and piano classes. One frequent drawing was that of ballerinas. She lived in San Miguel de Allende for twelve years.

In 1959, she met painter Roger von Gunten with whom she has been friends and colleagues since. At the beginning of the 1970s, Von Gunten moved in with her and helped her develop as an artist for two years until he decided to return to Mexico City. True to her English roots, she likes whiskey but likes tequila as well. The 2004 exhibit at the Museo de Arte Moderno was a major retrospective of her work in 2004 with 94 pieces.

Her work has been featured on the covers of books written by her husband and has been an artist in residence for the Universidad de la Américas. Her work can be found in the collections of the Dallas Museum, the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, the Museo de Arte Moderno and the collections of the Banco Nacional de México, BBVA Bancomer and Esso Oil of Canada. In 2012, she was awarded the Bellas Artes Medal in 2012 for her life's work. She has stated that she is part of no artistic movement or idealism; she simply paints in her own way. She work emphasizes blues, greens and whites for similar reasons, symbols of water and of peace. She remains interested in the end, infinity, death, apocalypse, paradise, eternity and immortality, with the idea of trying to name the unnamable.