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MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS

 

THE NEW PHYSICS (Einstein)
THE JAPANESE single 1942
THAT EVENING SUN GOES DOWN (radio stars) May 1938

 

Henry Pitz, American Artist article January 1948

 

VANITY FAIR covers
VANITY FAIR caricatures

 

 

 

Covarrubias (1904-1957) was better known as a contributor of refined, sharp and linear caricatures to Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. It is surprising he did not do more work for FORTUNE.His double page supplement commissioned for a feature on the development of American radio is a pip. He was already successful as a caricaturist in his native Mexico before coming to work in New York in 1923. He was later active as an archaologiost and writer about Meso-American culture

 

"Drawn from the Ransom Center's Nickolas Muray Collection of Mexican Art and other Ransom Center collections, the exhibition features more than 100 works and focuses on Covarrubias's celebrity caricatures, paintings, books, and book illustrations. A selection of work by some of the pioneering artists of celebrity caricature and Covarrubias's contemporaries at Vanity Fair and the New Yorker will accompany Covarrubias's works.

The exhibition also features paintings and drawings by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Roberto Montenegro, and others in Covarrubias's important artistic circle of friends. Muray's lifelong friendship with Covarrubias's circle of fellow artists allowed him to collect these numerous works of modern Mexican art.

"The scope of Miguel Covarrubias's career is remarkable and in many ways reflects the cultural shifts and restless spirit of the last century," said Peter Mears, curator of Miguel Covarrubias: A Certain Clairvoyance and the Ransom Center's Art Collection. "Through his artwork, books, and book illustrations, this exhibition calls attention to the flowering of cultural relations between the United States and Mexico during the 1920s and Harlem's spirited Renaissance of the same time period. It sheds historic light on the amazing discoveries and unearthing of ancient Olmec and Mayan art and touches on the camaraderie shared between Covarrubias and an important circle of modern Mexican artists."... "

 

From a notice published by the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center celebrating the centennial of Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias's birth with a commemorative exhibition, Miguel Covarrubias: A Certain Clairvoyance from Oct. 19 through April 24, 2005, in the Ransom Center Galleries.

 

There is a large collection of his work at the Mexican Museum, San Francisco.

 

photograph by Nicolas Muray

at the time of his work for FORTUNE

 

 

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