FEATURES ARCHIVE

The Mexican modernists—a generation of artists that included Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Alfredo Ramos Martínez and Miguel Covarrubias—are celebrated the world over for beautiful, vibrantly colored images that illustrate Mexico’s indigenous aesthetic of the early 20th century. Their foremost sources of inspiration were the natural wonders of Mexico—its mountains, valleys, the rich bounty of the Mexican flora and fauna, and most of all, its indigenous cultures.

Survivor, a newly rediscovered gem by Frida Kahlo, depicts a pre-Columbian terra-cotta warrior in a barren, oeniric landscape. These warriors, which were traditional burial offerings from western Mexico, were known to hold weapons in their hands; however this example is unarmed, and suggests a certain vulnerability. For the artist, the work symbolizes the survival of Mexico in an unstable world. Survivor was one of 25 works to appear at Kahlo’s first solo exhibition in New York, held at the Julien Levy gallery. It was purchased by Walter Pach, an art critic and close friend of Diego Rivera’s, from whom it passed by descent to the current owner.

Alfredo Ramos Martínez held a firm belief in a modernist nationalism that valued the local characteristics of his country, especially its land and people. At age 58, after a lifetime of painting and teaching, he and his wife moved to Los Angeles in 1930, where he continued to paint in an increasingly nostalgic, thoroughly modern style. Alfareros (Pottery Workers), a leading example from his early years in California, captures the stoic spirit of the archetypal Indian peasant, rendered here in rich brown and warm ochre tones.

The beautifully sculptural calla lily served as a central theme in the work of Diego Rivera, and one that embodied the spirit of la mexicanidad or Mexican nationalism. Viewing the sensual flower as a quintessential example of Mexico’s exotic flora, they provided an appealing visual counterpart to the more serious socio-political undertones of his work, such as the growing class divide in Mexico and the plight of the modern Indian. Flowers for the Market is undoubtedly one of the artist’s finest examples of this subject.

A modern-day Renaissance man, Miguel Covarrubias was a highly skilled painter whose intellectual pursuits included theater design, anthropology, and the caricatures he published regularly in Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. After traveling throughout Africa and Asia in the 1930s, Covarrubias returned to Mexico and began to focus more seriously on painting. Sitting Woman with Flowers, which likely dates from the 1930s, captures the charming motif of a Mexican tehuana with flowers, the bold patterning of her skirt and tunic echoing that of native cultures.