Mexico
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : Central and South Americas Women artists Self portrait Self portrait II Man and woman
Chronology : 1931 1933 1940-1949 1949
See also : Central and South Americas Women artists Self portrait Self portrait II Man and woman
Chronology : 1931 1933 1940-1949 1949
Intro
One of the root causes of the Mexican Revolution was the need to create a social identity that autocratic regimes could not offer.
In 1921, José Vasconcelos creates the Secretariat of Public Education. The population is mostly illiterate. Vasconcelos is developing the project to decorate public buildings with large murals promoting revolution and atheism as well as an egalitarian Mestizoism.
The participation of Vasconcelos in the government was short-lived but the best specificity of Mexican art in the twentieth century is a result of this initiative, not only through the social frescoes by Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros, but also with the surrealism by Kahlo and Carrington which benefited from this tendency to stylize for educating.
In 1921, José Vasconcelos creates the Secretariat of Public Education. The population is mostly illiterate. Vasconcelos is developing the project to decorate public buildings with large murals promoting revolution and atheism as well as an egalitarian Mestizoism.
The participation of Vasconcelos in the government was short-lived but the best specificity of Mexican art in the twentieth century is a result of this initiative, not only through the social frescoes by Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros, but also with the surrealism by Kahlo and Carrington which benefited from this tendency to stylize for educating.
1931 The Rivals by Rivera
2022 SOLD for $ 14M by Christie's
The Mexican muralism was born in 1921 from an observation by Vasconcelos : the people are mostly illiterate but the public image can be as suitable as a writing for propagating the fervor of the Revolution. Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros and Tamayo create a new art adapted to the socialist ideas.
Out of standards in every meaning of that wording, Diego Rivera is uncompromising. His artistic message is communist and anticlerical and he will not change it even under the pressure generated by his provocations.
In New York City, Abby Rockefeller begins in 1925 a collection of modern European art which is not so much supported by her husband but she moves forward. The creation of the Museum of Modern Art in 1929 comes mainly from her personal initiative. She multiplies the actions, including a first solo exhibition which is dedicated to Matisse.
Mexican art shows mostly the people, even if they are confronted with the abuses from the bourgeoisie. Abby, who was also collecting folk art, devotes the second solo exhibition of the MoMA to Rivera in 1931. The thunderous artist had been accused of anti-Soviet activities while working in Moscow and the Mexican Communist Party had fired him. Some recent activities in California showed his interest to the United States.
John D. Rockefeller Jr, Abby's husband, does not see the political trap. In 1933 he commissions some murals for the Rockefeller Center to Rivera. Without warning, Rivera introduces into the picture a portrait of Lenin and categorically refuses to withdraw it despite an attempted negotiation by the young Nelson Rockefeller. The fresco is scrapped but Rivera has achieved his goal of ridiculing the capitalists.
With the invitation of 1931 Abby Rockefeller had commissioned an artwork to Rivera. He completed it during the boat journey to New York. The Rivals, oil on canvas 152 x 127 cm, is about a celebration of patron saints in Oaxaca. The composition is animated at various distances by groups of characters in local clothing, with the shimmering exotic colors that pleased Abby. This picture is in the recent decorative style of Matisse.
The Rivals was given as a wedding present to David and Peggy Rockefeller in 1941. Coming from their deceased estate, it was sold for $ 9.8M by Christie's on May 9, 2018, lot 424. Coming afterward from the Paul G. Allen collection, it was sold for $ 14M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 37.
Out of standards in every meaning of that wording, Diego Rivera is uncompromising. His artistic message is communist and anticlerical and he will not change it even under the pressure generated by his provocations.
In New York City, Abby Rockefeller begins in 1925 a collection of modern European art which is not so much supported by her husband but she moves forward. The creation of the Museum of Modern Art in 1929 comes mainly from her personal initiative. She multiplies the actions, including a first solo exhibition which is dedicated to Matisse.
Mexican art shows mostly the people, even if they are confronted with the abuses from the bourgeoisie. Abby, who was also collecting folk art, devotes the second solo exhibition of the MoMA to Rivera in 1931. The thunderous artist had been accused of anti-Soviet activities while working in Moscow and the Mexican Communist Party had fired him. Some recent activities in California showed his interest to the United States.
John D. Rockefeller Jr, Abby's husband, does not see the political trap. In 1933 he commissions some murals for the Rockefeller Center to Rivera. Without warning, Rivera introduces into the picture a portrait of Lenin and categorically refuses to withdraw it despite an attempted negotiation by the young Nelson Rockefeller. The fresco is scrapped but Rivera has achieved his goal of ridiculing the capitalists.
With the invitation of 1931 Abby Rockefeller had commissioned an artwork to Rivera. He completed it during the boat journey to New York. The Rivals, oil on canvas 152 x 127 cm, is about a celebration of patron saints in Oaxaca. The composition is animated at various distances by groups of characters in local clothing, with the shimmering exotic colors that pleased Abby. This picture is in the recent decorative style of Matisse.
The Rivals was given as a wedding present to David and Peggy Rockefeller in 1941. Coming from their deceased estate, it was sold for $ 9.8M by Christie's on May 9, 2018, lot 424. Coming afterward from the Paul G. Allen collection, it was sold for $ 14M by Christie's on November 9, 2022, lot 37.
1933 Ugly Self Portrait by Kahlo
2022 SOLD for $ 8.6M by Christie's
In 1933 Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo stay in New York from March to end of year. While Diego works for the project of a mural for the Rockefeller center, Frida goes crazy with the dime stores of cheap costume jewelry. Lucienne Bloch is her shopping companion.
She soon gets bored of New York which she nicknames 'Gringolandia'. Her health is poor and she does not set to paint.
A self portrait on Celotex insulation board 27 x 22 cm is an exception, using colors that she was grinding for Diego's plastered fresco panels.
In her usual practice she endeavors to express her mood. She displays herself as very ugly, in her own words. It was in summer while she already was in homesickness for Mexico and while Diego had an affair with Louise Nevelson.
The low cost necklace is a sign of her disenchantment from New York. The background is tagged as Basquiat will do in the same city half a century later. Tags are read 'SIRV, OH! BOY, VERY U and FRIEDA (sic)' plus a sad bird and a big apple. The overall contour of the image is irregularly curved.
This emotional painting was gifted by Frida to Lucienne who kept it for half a century. It was sold for $ 8.6M from a lower estimate of $ 7M by Christie's on November 17, 2022, lot 31.
She soon gets bored of New York which she nicknames 'Gringolandia'. Her health is poor and she does not set to paint.
A self portrait on Celotex insulation board 27 x 22 cm is an exception, using colors that she was grinding for Diego's plastered fresco panels.
In her usual practice she endeavors to express her mood. She displays herself as very ugly, in her own words. It was in summer while she already was in homesickness for Mexico and while Diego had an affair with Louise Nevelson.
The low cost necklace is a sign of her disenchantment from New York. The background is tagged as Basquiat will do in the same city half a century later. Tags are read 'SIRV, OH! BOY, VERY U and FRIEDA (sic)' plus a sad bird and a big apple. The overall contour of the image is irregularly curved.
This emotional painting was gifted by Frida to Lucienne who kept it for half a century. It was sold for $ 8.6M from a lower estimate of $ 7M by Christie's on November 17, 2022, lot 31.
1939 Dos Desnudos by Kahlo
2016 SOLD for $ 8M by Christie's
The life of Frida Kahlo was always difficult but 1939 was particularly painful and distressing both physically and psychologically. She is 32 years old. Nothing goes right with her husband and idol Diego Rivera who had been accepting her homosexual desires but is jealous of her men.
Frida needs some comforting and eventually considers that she can only find it within herself in a pathetic doubling of her personality. Las Dos Fridas is a double self portrait by the artist commented by herself as a symbol of her loneliness, broken by the fact that the two women are holding their hands.
This artwork helps to understand Dos desnudos en el bosque, oil on metal 25 x 30 cm painted in the same year.
A woman with dark skin is lovingly caressing a lying white woman. They are nude in a calm attitude but in the surrounding of a torrid vegetation loaded with sexual symbols. The sniper monkey plays the role of the male who will not be rejected by this Sapphic couple.
The seated woman has one leg that hangs into a seismic ravine. She fertilizes the soil through her long scarf and an almost imperceptible bleeding. Rooting is a recurring theme of the artist in her search for the mystery of human life and her need for a shelter against all the threats of the world.
The faces are not identifiable and Dos desnudos can be a double self portrait. If this is not the case, one of the women is the first owner of this painting, the Mexican film star Dolores del Río who was probably one of the targets of Frida's bisexuality.
Dos Desnudos was sold for $ 8M by Christie's on May 12, 2016, lot 21C.
Frida needs some comforting and eventually considers that she can only find it within herself in a pathetic doubling of her personality. Las Dos Fridas is a double self portrait by the artist commented by herself as a symbol of her loneliness, broken by the fact that the two women are holding their hands.
This artwork helps to understand Dos desnudos en el bosque, oil on metal 25 x 30 cm painted in the same year.
A woman with dark skin is lovingly caressing a lying white woman. They are nude in a calm attitude but in the surrounding of a torrid vegetation loaded with sexual symbols. The sniper monkey plays the role of the male who will not be rejected by this Sapphic couple.
The seated woman has one leg that hangs into a seismic ravine. She fertilizes the soil through her long scarf and an almost imperceptible bleeding. Rooting is a recurring theme of the artist in her search for the mystery of human life and her need for a shelter against all the threats of the world.
The faces are not identifiable and Dos desnudos can be a double self portrait. If this is not the case, one of the women is the first owner of this painting, the Mexican film star Dolores del Río who was probably one of the targets of Frida's bisexuality.
Dos Desnudos was sold for $ 8M by Christie's on May 12, 2016, lot 21C.
1942 Perro by Tamayo
2018 SOLD for $ 5.9M by Sotheby's
Unlike Orozco, Rivera and Siqueiros, Tamayo does not want to illustrate the revolution. Relying on his Zapotec heritage, he seeks to express in his art the roots and peculiarities of the Mexican people. Like Lam in Cuba his origins are mixed. Like Lam he finds the solution in an adaptation of modern art to his own message.
The pictorial expression does not need a shimmering palette. Tamayo reduces his painting to a few pure, dark colors, in a unique balance that could have led him durably to abstraction.
Picasso's Guernica had been sheltered away from political censorship at the MoMA since 1939. Tamayo is in New York since 1937. The war in Europe cannot leave him indifferent. Guernica inspires his own cry of anguish, in his signature style of colors.
On May 14, 2018, Sotheby's sold for $ 5.9M Perro aullando a la Luna, oil on canvas 112 x 86 cm painted in 1942, lot 25. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The dark red dog is sitting larger than life in the blue night. He screams like the horse in Guernica although no threat is apparent. The stretched throat reveals the veins swollen by the howl. The beautiful bones placed before him as offerings do not calm him.
However Tamayo's dog is not a Guernica dog. There were representations of screaming dogs in pre-Columbian America that Tamayo knew well : he had begun his career in Mexico City in 1921 in the ethnographic drawing department of the archeology museum.
The pictorial expression does not need a shimmering palette. Tamayo reduces his painting to a few pure, dark colors, in a unique balance that could have led him durably to abstraction.
Picasso's Guernica had been sheltered away from political censorship at the MoMA since 1939. Tamayo is in New York since 1937. The war in Europe cannot leave him indifferent. Guernica inspires his own cry of anguish, in his signature style of colors.
On May 14, 2018, Sotheby's sold for $ 5.9M Perro aullando a la Luna, oil on canvas 112 x 86 cm painted in 1942, lot 25. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The dark red dog is sitting larger than life in the blue night. He screams like the horse in Guernica although no threat is apparent. The stretched throat reveals the veins swollen by the howl. The beautiful bones placed before him as offerings do not calm him.
However Tamayo's dog is not a Guernica dog. There were representations of screaming dogs in pre-Columbian America that Tamayo knew well : he had begun his career in Mexico City in 1921 in the ethnographic drawing department of the archeology museum.
1945 Trovador by Tamayo
2008 SOLD for $ 7.2M by Christie's
In Mexico the trovador is a street singer. A keen observer of Mexican life, Tamayo caricatured one of them in 1945 with a wide open mouth and playing a guitar, followed by two mujeres. In Occitan culture the troubadour had been a trouveur, a poet who created his own songs and complaintes.
This typical Mexican theme is expressed in the shadow in rich saturated colors. Trovador, larger than life oil on canvas 153 x 127 cm painted in 1945, was sold for $ 7.2M from a lower estimate of $ 2M by Christie's on May 29, 2008, lot 18.
This typical Mexican theme is expressed in the shadow in rich saturated colors. Trovador, larger than life oil on canvas 153 x 127 cm painted in 1945, was sold for $ 7.2M from a lower estimate of $ 2M by Christie's on May 29, 2008, lot 18.
1949 Diego y Yo by Kahlo
2021 SOLD for $ 35M by Sotheby's
Frida Kahlo suffered a lifelong intense pain in her back after an accident. She courageously faced her condition by her art and by her quest for a passion out of the ordinary, including political commitment and bisexuality. She found her partner, unfaithful husband and accomplice in the Communist artist Diego Rivera, 20 years older than her.
Kahlo's art is made of metaphors and symbols with a high poetry. A friend of the Surrealists, she nevertheless insisted to state that she was not representing her dreams but her reality. 55 of her ca 143 paintings are self portraits.
Eager to exchange an empathy, she often made and inscribed self portraits for friends : Trotsky, her doctors. On November 16, 2021, Sotheby's sold such a self portrait for $ 35M, lot 12. This oil on masonite 30 x 22 cm painted in 1949 is dedicated to Florence and Sam, a couple of friends who were instrumental in promoting her art. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The piece was titled Diego y yo by the artist. It displays the portrait in bust of Diego Rivera on the forehead, fully centered between eyebrows and hair. This figure has at the same place the third eye of wisdom. The intimate theme of this self portrait is indeed her obsession for Diego. Three tears flow on her cheeks.
A self portrait executed in 1954, the year of her untimely death, is in the same inspiration, with the image of Diego on the breast and of her rival Maria between the eyebrows.
Kahlo's art is made of metaphors and symbols with a high poetry. A friend of the Surrealists, she nevertheless insisted to state that she was not representing her dreams but her reality. 55 of her ca 143 paintings are self portraits.
Eager to exchange an empathy, she often made and inscribed self portraits for friends : Trotsky, her doctors. On November 16, 2021, Sotheby's sold such a self portrait for $ 35M, lot 12. This oil on masonite 30 x 22 cm painted in 1949 is dedicated to Florence and Sam, a couple of friends who were instrumental in promoting her art. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The piece was titled Diego y yo by the artist. It displays the portrait in bust of Diego Rivera on the forehead, fully centered between eyebrows and hair. This figure has at the same place the third eye of wisdom. The intimate theme of this self portrait is indeed her obsession for Diego. Three tears flow on her cheeks.
A self portrait executed in 1954, the year of her untimely death, is in the same inspiration, with the image of Diego on the breast and of her rival Maria between the eyebrows.
1950 Columba Dominguez by Rivera
2021 SOLD for $ 7.4M by Sotheby's
Back in his home country in 1921, Diego Rivera was keen to highlight the ethnic and cultural specificities of the Mexicans.
A lifelong womanizer, he also made life size portraits of pretty actresses of Hollywood and Mexico, including Paulette Goddard in 1940. In the later 1940s Maria Felix was the leading movie actress in Mexico, often directed by Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez.
In 1949 Felix disputed a portrait by Rivera, stating later : "I wanted him to paint me as a Tehuana, but he said it was very vulgar, so he painted me as he wanted ... naked, because he was very much in love with me".
Another leading actress in El Indio's films was Columba Dominguez, a native beauty who started her career with him at age 16 in 1945 and was his wife or partner from 1947 to 1952.
The portrait of Dominguez was commissioned to Rivera who viewed her as a pure expression of Mexico. Against his own statement reported by Felix, he painted her with the gorgeous huipile blouse and the narrow enredo skirt of the women in Tehuantepec in the southeast of Mexico. Dominguez is featured in a dignified demeanor and proud gaze, walking barefoot while carrying a dried pumpkin gourd. The life size provides a spectacular presence of this portrait freed of cinematographic eroticism.
The Retrato de Columba Dominguez de Fernandez, oil on canvas 193 x 120 cm painted in 1950, was sold for $ 7.4M from a lower estimate of $ 2M by Sotheby's on May 13, 2021, lot 1024.
A lifelong womanizer, he also made life size portraits of pretty actresses of Hollywood and Mexico, including Paulette Goddard in 1940. In the later 1940s Maria Felix was the leading movie actress in Mexico, often directed by Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez.
In 1949 Felix disputed a portrait by Rivera, stating later : "I wanted him to paint me as a Tehuana, but he said it was very vulgar, so he painted me as he wanted ... naked, because he was very much in love with me".
Another leading actress in El Indio's films was Columba Dominguez, a native beauty who started her career with him at age 16 in 1945 and was his wife or partner from 1947 to 1952.
The portrait of Dominguez was commissioned to Rivera who viewed her as a pure expression of Mexico. Against his own statement reported by Felix, he painted her with the gorgeous huipile blouse and the narrow enredo skirt of the women in Tehuantepec in the southeast of Mexico. Dominguez is featured in a dignified demeanor and proud gaze, walking barefoot while carrying a dried pumpkin gourd. The life size provides a spectacular presence of this portrait freed of cinematographic eroticism.
The Retrato de Columba Dominguez de Fernandez, oil on canvas 193 x 120 cm painted in 1950, was sold for $ 7.4M from a lower estimate of $ 2M by Sotheby's on May 13, 2021, lot 1024.
1955 America by Tamayo
2008 SOLD for $ 6.8M by Sotheby's
America, a vinylite on canvas 4 x 14 m, is a monument in every sense. It was made in 1955 by Rufino Tamayo on order from a bank of Houston. Tamayo did only five murals for the United States, and it is the only one still in private hands. He spent five months to achieve it, alone, working everyday. He had to seek a workshop in Mexico City, because his own was too small.
America is a tangle of many symbols of American continents in an explosion of color. It was sold for $ 6.8M by Sotheby's on November 18, 2008, lot 12.
America is a tangle of many symbols of American continents in an explosion of color. It was sold for $ 6.8M by Sotheby's on November 18, 2008, lot 12.
1956 Armonia by Varo
2020 SOLD for $ 6.2M by Sotheby's
The art of Remedios Varo is surreal, with a subtle neo-medieval atmosphere. She incorporates contradictions and aberrations into finely drawn figures, bringing occultism and alchemy amid an apparent realism. Many of her paintings are self-portraits, in which she is recognizable by a too short chin.
On June 30, 2020, Sotheby's sold at lot 1004 for $ 6.2M from a lower estimate of $ 2M an oil on masonite 75 x 93 cm painted in 1956, titled Armonia (Autorretrato sugerente).
The artist's studio takes the form of a Romanesque chapel. The woman is sitting on a stool in front of a table. Without paying attention, she threads small objects onto a musical stave that has taken the function of a pattern of ropes, in front of a wall figure that appears like a life-size monochrome self-portrait.
The workshop layout is symmetrical, with another monochrome figure and another stave on the right side of the room. In this place, the stave is perpendicular to the wall figure, whose hand shoots out of the frame to catch a threaded object.
Now that the attention is drawn to these artefacts, we find that they are everywhere, indefinable and transparent, sometimes vegetated : they are disgorging from hatches in the floor and overflowing from drawers, chests and even the bidet. A grimoire which is perhaps an antiphonary is opened in front of the clef. This woman who seemed modern is a witch, claimed in the subtitle as a self-portrait. In the door, a bird in flight escapes this surreal madness.
On June 30, 2020, Sotheby's sold at lot 1004 for $ 6.2M from a lower estimate of $ 2M an oil on masonite 75 x 93 cm painted in 1956, titled Armonia (Autorretrato sugerente).
The artist's studio takes the form of a Romanesque chapel. The woman is sitting on a stool in front of a table. Without paying attention, she threads small objects onto a musical stave that has taken the function of a pattern of ropes, in front of a wall figure that appears like a life-size monochrome self-portrait.
The workshop layout is symmetrical, with another monochrome figure and another stave on the right side of the room. In this place, the stave is perpendicular to the wall figure, whose hand shoots out of the frame to catch a threaded object.
Now that the attention is drawn to these artefacts, we find that they are everywhere, indefinable and transparent, sometimes vegetated : they are disgorging from hatches in the floor and overflowing from drawers, chests and even the bidet. A grimoire which is perhaps an antiphonary is opened in front of the clef. This woman who seemed modern is a witch, claimed in the subtitle as a self-portrait. In the door, a bird in flight escapes this surreal madness.
1980 Sandias by Tamayo
2019 SOLD for $ 4.9M by Sotheby's
Rufino Tamayo prefers formal research in opposition to the narrative pictures of his Mexican contemporaries. He puts into practice an original theory that variations around a single color are more expressive than a wide range of colors.
The slice of watermelon is throughout his long career the favorite theme of his still lifes. Its flesh varying from pink to red is lined with the white arc of the peel. As an uncut fruit or as a food, watermelon never appeals him.
On May 14, 2019, Sotheby's sold for $ 4.9M from a lower estimate of $ 4M Sandias, oil and marble dust on canvas 124 x 181 cm painted in 1980, lot 45.
Sandias had been made by Tamayo for his personal use : it remained hanging in his dining room until 1989. Painted when he had just turned 80, it appears somehow like an artistic testament.
Eight slices of watermelons are unequally arranged on an abstract surface with rich colors ranging from mauve to purple plus several shades of pinks. Their flat support is perhaps the top of a cup or a stand, in a swinging perspective that evokes Cézanne through Matisse.
A painting 140 x 175 cm titled Ofrenda de frutas executed in 1987 in the same technique undoubtedly provides the key to the euphoric effect of slices of watermelon on Tamayo. A jolly character carries an assortment of exotic fruits within a white cloth. The folds of the cloth take the form of a watermelon slice or of the hilarious smile of a clown. It was sold for $ 4.2M by Sotheby's on November 25, 2014.
The slice of watermelon is throughout his long career the favorite theme of his still lifes. Its flesh varying from pink to red is lined with the white arc of the peel. As an uncut fruit or as a food, watermelon never appeals him.
On May 14, 2019, Sotheby's sold for $ 4.9M from a lower estimate of $ 4M Sandias, oil and marble dust on canvas 124 x 181 cm painted in 1980, lot 45.
Sandias had been made by Tamayo for his personal use : it remained hanging in his dining room until 1989. Painted when he had just turned 80, it appears somehow like an artistic testament.
Eight slices of watermelons are unequally arranged on an abstract surface with rich colors ranging from mauve to purple plus several shades of pinks. Their flat support is perhaps the top of a cup or a stand, in a swinging perspective that evokes Cézanne through Matisse.
A painting 140 x 175 cm titled Ofrenda de frutas executed in 1987 in the same technique undoubtedly provides the key to the euphoric effect of slices of watermelon on Tamayo. A jolly character carries an assortment of exotic fruits within a white cloth. The folds of the cloth take the form of a watermelon slice or of the hilarious smile of a clown. It was sold for $ 4.2M by Sotheby's on November 25, 2014.
