- Title
- Nudes (Desnudos)
- Date Made
- 1933
- Medium
- Oil on board
- Dimensions
- 5 3/4 × 7 3/4 in. (14.6 × 19.68 cm)
- Accession Number
- AC1997.LWN.249
- Collecting Area
- Latin American Art
- Curatorial Notes
While living in Mexico City in the 1920s, French-born artist Jean Charlot created dozens of small-scale easel paintings featuring Indigenous subjects. In this painted sketch, two women arrange their braids, a popular motif for the artist (see also M.72.118.10) and a nod to the long history of nude bathers in Western art. Charlot, whose maternal grandfather was born in Mexico City, grew up in Paris surrounded by his family’s collection of Mexican art and antiquities. This early exposure to Mexico’s rich popular-art traditions and Mesoamerican artistic legacy had a profound impact on his future aesthetic interests. Although Charlot left Mexico in 1928, Mexican themes remained central to his art and his scholarly pursuits throughout his career.
Charlot played a pivotal role in the development of the Mexican mural movement. Soon after arriving in Mexico City in 1921, he was commissioned to paint one of the murals at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National Preparatory School; now known as the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso). Widely considered the movement’s birthplace, the school houses important works by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. Charlot was also a prolific writer, as demonstrated by his seminal books Mexican Art and the Academy of San Carlos, 1785–1915 (1962) and The Mexican Mural Renaissance, 1920–1925 (1963), which helped to codify formative moments in the history of Mexican art.
Rachel Kaplan
2024
- Copyright
- © The Jean Charlot Estate LLC / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
