Joy Laville

Joy Laville (born September 8, 1923) is 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.

Joy Laville was born on September 8, 1923, in Ryde on the Isle of Wight . Her father was Francis Laville, a captain in the Indian Army of the Seventh Rajput Regiment. Her mother was Vera Elizabeth Perren. While Joy was conceived in India, her mother decided to go to England to give birth because she lost her first pregnancy. Her parents divorced shortly after her younger sister, Rosemarie, was born and Joy was five. Her mother remarried shortly after and her father died in 1939 from tuberculosis .

Joy describes herself as a child as quiet and sensitive but happy, near the ocean with her talent for drawing appearing early. As a child she took ballet and piano classes. One frequent drawing was that of ballerinas.

When the Second World War began, Joy and her sister had to leave school and stay home. Bored, she demanded art classes and her mother sent her to an art school in the south of England. Due to the needs of the war, Joy soon joined the Observer Corps in Yorkshire, where she worked to detect and map the movement of Allied and Axis planes as they flew over England. The war took its toll and she learned that life was fragile. This made her rebellious and libertine in young adulthood. At age 17 she fell in love with a Jewish refugee named Julius Taussky but her mother and stepfather would not let her marry because of her age.

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