Jean Charlot
Dance of the Malinches (Danza de las malinches)1948

Not on view

Oil painting of two figures in wide-brimmed hats grappling at close range, surrounded by loosely painted green trees, in coral red, cobalt blue, and sage tones

Artist or Maker: Jean Charlot
France, active Mexico, New York, and Hawaii, 1898-1979
Title: Dance of the Malinches (Danza de las malinches)
Date Made: 1948
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 60.96 cm)
Credit Line: The Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art
Accession Number: AC1997.LWN.460
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: Jean 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. Living in Mexico through most of the 1920s, Charlot created dozens of small-scale easel paintings featuring Indigenous subjects. This canvas depicts two girls engaged in the popular mock battle called the “Dance of the Malinches” (danza de las malinches). Charlot first encountered the dance, named after Hernán Cortés’s Indigenous translator, while visiting friends near Querétaro in 1926. Although Charlot left Mexico in 1928, he returned to versions of this scene 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

Jean Charlot
Dance of the Malinches (Danza de las malinches)1948

Not on view

Artist or Maker: Jean Charlot
France, active Mexico, New York, and Hawaii, 1898-1979
Title: Dance of the Malinches (Danza de las malinches)
Date Made: 1948
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 60.96 cm)
Credit Line: The Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art
Accession Number: AC1997.LWN.460
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: Jean 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. Living in Mexico through most of the 1920s, Charlot created dozens of small-scale easel paintings featuring Indigenous subjects. This canvas depicts two girls engaged in the popular mock battle called the “Dance of the Malinches” (danza de las malinches). Charlot first encountered the dance, named after Hernán Cortés’s Indigenous translator, while visiting friends near Querétaro in 1926. Although Charlot left Mexico in 1928, he returned to versions of this scene 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