SAMA celebrates work of Mexican ‘Renaissance man’

For years, “La Tehuana (Woman from Tehuantepec)” was a little lonely.

Until recently, the oil painting from 1944, which depicts a statuesque Zapotec woman strolling across a plaza, was the only work by Miguel Covarrubias in the San Antonio Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

That changed dramatically last year when the museum acquired more than 100 works on paper by the Mexican master, including drawings and watercolor gouache renderings.

Now on display at SAMA, “Miguel Covarrubias: Culture and Caricature” is the first exhibit showcasing the museum’s new holdings. About 20 works in the show were borrowed from the Library of Congress, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas and Yale University to round out the show.

“We thought that this was the perfect opportunity to celebrate not only the acquisition of the work, but also to use that acquisition augmented by some key loans to tell the story of Covarrubias as a modern master and as someone who defined the way that a whole historical moment saw itself,” said William Rudolph, chief curator at SAMA.

Covarrubias, who died in 1957 at the age of 53, was “a Renaissance man,” said Marion Oettinger, curator of Latin American art at SAMA.

The son of a civil engineer, Covarrubias moved to New York from Mexico in 1924 at the age of 19. He quickly made a name for himself as an illustrator for Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. He also became internationally known as a painter, caricaturist, archaeologist, writer, cartographer and set designer.

In the 1930s, Covarrubias was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to do research in Bali. Published in 1937, his book “The Island of Bali” is regarded as a classic. In the 1940s, he received a second fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation which he used to produce “Mexico South: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec,” a book about the archaeology, history and ethnography of Oaxaca.

“Covarrubias was one of the most brilliant people on the art scene in the first half of the 20th century,” Oettinger said.

During Covarrubias’ career, the artist published or illustrated more than 50 books, Oettinger said. Among the earliest works in the show are pieces from “The Price of Wales and Other Famous Americans,” published in 1925, and “Negro Drawings” published in 1927.

The former — his first book of caricatures — featured images of prominent New Yorkers and other cultural figures such as business magnate John D. Rockefeller, Sr., artist Pablo Picasso and performer Eddie Cantor. The latter was inspired by Harlem cafe society, Oettinger said: “Just the scene in New York at that time. Jazz was really big, the Cotton Club. New York society was informed by all that stuff.”

Illustrations from Covarrubias’ “Mexico South” project in the show include a watercolor depiction of a Huave Indian couple sitting on the ground in front of a blanket and a detailed drawing of a Tehuana skirt.

Among the caricatures, Covarrubias depicts himself with a blocky head, highly arched eyebrows and a double chin; his wife, dancer Rosa Rolanda, with heavy-lidded, dinner plate-sized eyes and a rosebud mouth; and his friend, painter Adolfo Best Maugard, with a bulbous forehead and round, protruding eyes.

“He was able to very quickly get to the spirit of the sitter, and he could accentuate features, which caricatures do, but without (making people angry),” Oettinger said. “He did it with humor, but he captured the moment and he captured the spirit o the city and the environment.”

An illustration Covarrubias created of the reception for “Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art,” a blockbuster exhibit that opened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940, is a panoply of luminaries, including businessman and politician Nelson Rockefeller,who was on the museum board, Vanity Fair Publisher Frank Crowninshield, artist Georgia O’Keefe, singer and actor Paul Robeson and actress Greta Garbo.

“Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art” included a section on folk art. Some of the pieces in the exhibition are now part of the permanent collection at SAMA. A handful of the works, including an 18th century centurion dance mask, are on display in the Covarrubias show as a tribute to the 30-year friendship between the artist and Nelson Rockefeller.

The works by Covarrubias now in SAMA’s permanent collection were purchased with funds from the Lillie and Roy Cullen Endowment Fund.

“It’s unusual for a museum to have this many works by one artist,” Rudolph said. “So this really means we have the potential to become a resource for anyone who wants to work on Covarrubias.”

“Miguel Covarrubias: Culture and Caricature” continues through Oct. 18 at the San Antonio Museum of Art, 200 W. Jones Ave., 210-978-8100, www.samuseum.org .