In a 2014 review of a Lezama exhibition, Ricardo Pohlenz wrote ‘Somewhere between allegory and eschatology there is a leap into the void that can only be averted by turning to myth. In the evolution of Lezama’s work, his allegories – the fictions that he represents on the canvas – have been reinvented again and again, and have at the end devoured themselves, like the ouroboros of the alchemists, in order to stop being a reflection of pictorial themes and instead become an eschatology. Lezama revisits pre-Hispanic myths in many of his paintings, and updates them to translate them into symbols that define contemporary reality.’

A good example of Lezama’s interpretation of mythology is the painting titled Árbol Nodriza (Mother Tree), which he created after reading about the Chichihualcuauhco, the tree that feeds children before birth. He later found out about another mythological tree named Tamoanchan: Tlalocan, or paradise, is a place where there is a tree in the centre that holds the sky. That tree is responsible for the birth of mankind. It contains and combines the energies of heaven and earth from which the story of humanity arises as those two forces merge.