Mexican Modern Art 1910 - 1950 (30)


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Source: WTL photograph© at the Special Exhibition of "Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism 1910 - 1950," at the Philadelphia Art Museum, December 13, 2016.
Image: "Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art at the Museum of Modern Art [New York City]" (1940) by Miguel Covarrubias (1904-57). Watercolor on paper.
Comments: Covarrubias made this watercolor drawing for Vogue Magazine. It depict the opening celebration of the major art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, the title for which is shown above. The giant statue of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue in the center was actually shipped to New York for this show. Covarrubias was an art historian, anthropologist, artist, and caricaturist, the above work being an example of the latter art form.  He is one of the artists who popularized Mexican culture in the United States, doing covers for The New Yorker and Vogue. One of this major contributions to pre-Columbian humanities is his theory that the Olmec culture predated the Classic Era (true) and that by means of "cultural diffusion" Olmec culture spread to the Mississippian culture in what is now the United States. In the exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Museum, this work was accompanied by a list identifying the crowd of socialites and personalities who attended the opening; see: => Mexican Modern Art #30a.
For the statue itself as it is displayed in Mexico City's great Museo Nacional de Antropología, see: => Aztec Art #14 and => Aztec Art #15.
Humanities Questions: He


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