- Artist or Maker
- Jean Charlot
France, active Mexico, New York, and Hawaii, 1898-1979 - Title
- Gossip (Mestizas and Hammock)
- Date Made
- 1937
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.64 cm)
- Accession Number
- AC1997.LWN.3436
- Collecting Area
- Latin American Art
- Curatorial Notes
While living in Mexico in the 1920s, French-born artist Jean Charlot created dozens of small-scale easel paintings. His intimate compositions capture his Indigenous subjects performing chores or caught unawares in private moments. In Gossip (Mestizas and Hammock), two women huddle together sharing secrets. The presence of a young child and dog is intimated by their legs at either side of the composition. 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
