was Miguel Covarrubias' father a Sonntagsmaler a very young child, Miguel liked to sit by his father to watch him at work This happened almost every. weekend. Noticing his interest, his father gave the little boy paper and pencil. Miguel happy now dealt to take pictures. As it was, called the sketches to draw attention to his burgeoning investment. At the time he was 14 years old and in high school he was to make caricatures of the teachers to the amusement of his classmates.
From then on, wherever Covarrubias went he carried with him a pencil and sketchpad in ready to paper or someone to put something that caught his attention. In the evenings, he liked to go to vaudeville revues and later to the cafes where gathered in Mexico City intellectuals and artists.
Covarrubias from this period as a shy, chubby boy sits always busy drawing recalls in a corner. He has been given the affectionate nickname "El Chamaco", "The Kid", a nickname that would stay with him for the rest of his life. Some of the cartoons he already known artists such as Diego Rivera or visiting writer, D. H. Lawrence ended, stuck on the walls of "EL Monote", one of the cafes. Soon he was asked caricature of Mexico City in fashion magazines and student publications, including the popular art magazine Zig-Zag.
When he was eighteen years old, Covarrubias found himself in New York City to carry and was soon caricatures of celebrities from the arts and entertainment world to make, and celebrities from the political and social worlds , He was also an important factor for the Harlem Renaissance movement. Alan Fern, a former director of the Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC wrote
Al Hirschfeld, who shared with Miguel in the twenties, commented a studio: "I know that he much diddle use and sketch on tablecloths and menus in restaurants .... In Harlem he made hundreds of sketches in a sketchbook and if there were no longer any blank sheets on matchboxes, on napkins, and anything he could find. "
After the release of Covarrubias' first book in 1925, the Prince of Wales and other Americans marveled his mentor Carl Van Vechten: "I have always found it as an axiom that a cartoonist should know his subject for ten years before he made him to pull ....
Later that year, Van Vechten once again made a similar observation in his novel, firecrackers, which he dedicated to MC. In the book, ponders a sign about" a young Mexican boy, Miguel Covarrubias, the created caricatures of celebrities who he knew by sight and name only, which exposed the whole mystery of the subject personalities. Here was clairvoyance. "
From 1926 began Covarrubias books illustrated. When he would start to read the text to sketch and, at the end, the select most suitable images. Some of the drawings were repeated as many as fifteen times in a patient experiments, to find the right approach and technique.
Covarrubias book was Negro drawings two years later released. In his preface to the book, the cartoonist Ralph Barton "Covarrubias certified drawings ... need to only to understand, to be considered. To draw draws as Covarrubias, one has to be with a penchant for understanding all born. As we in the drawings we see are aware that they bear the stamp of genius. "The Valentine Gallery in New York City gave Covarrubias of black and white artists
In 1928, his first exhibition specified catalog.." "After its release, the Encyclopedia Britannica listed him among the" Miracle simplification, which is rarely achieved such an important element in the Covarrubias drawings. He starts an image to no more than the most abstract of the thumbnails, but he is ready to draw and redraw to be fulfilled to his strong sense of visual accuracy. The end result is deceptively simple as a rule. It has a view immediate and spontaneous creation. "
Covarrubias married Rosa Rolanda in 1930. For their honeymoon they take the boat to China and traveled to Bali. Covarrubias threw himself into Balinese life. Everything he has experienced recorded in sketches. The result of his two stays in Bali was his book, Bali island, are represented by a summary sketches Many of the topics published in the book in 1937.
Covarrubias was a passionate anthropological researcher. He immersed himself in the art and culture of primitive cultures . its sort of ideas sorting out and the way of his understanding a culture was through the use of drawings. As a teacher, his students remember him with the always pens in his coat pocket and make a notebook to sketch. to show the class, what he described Covarrubias would simply turn to the blackboard and draw. "It goes something like this ...".
the same was true for his archaeological research. The Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso declared: "He archeology was something that was missing ... and that was an aesthetic perception of form, always right." The archaeologist Michael Coe said: "I learned a lot from his drawings."
, the group of Bali and Chinese sketches is performed in this exhibition by Miguel Covarrubias in the early thirties, a window into the creative process of its operation. Wherever he was, he took the people and events for later use. These sketches show his keen sense of observation and his intellectual curiosity and his loyalty and artistic understanding of his subjects.
Many of these sketches were the first step before they develop into refined line or wash drawings or studies in color. Good examples of the Bali sketches the corresponding Theses "Food Stall", "Every night is Festival Night", "Brahman Priest or Pendanda" and "Princess and Attendant" (A scene from the Ardja, Balinese Opera). This work can see published in Covarrubias in Bali by Editions Didier Millet. several improved drawings for Marc Chadourne book China and gouache for the jacket of Albert Gervais book Madame flowery feeling from the Chinese sketches there in 1937
Miguel Covarrubias began his career as a cartoonist and graphic artist. Whether he worked on a cartoon, a book illustration, teaching a course, a map or sets for a ballet of design, a culture, or the solution to study an archaeological mystery, he has always sketched.
The sketches in this exhibition he are working examples of the way and are works of art in their own right. Rubin de la Borbollas said: "Perhaps one of the most profound teachings from Covarrubias is to be learned there is no aspect of how abstract it may be, of human knowledge or the nature that surrounds the people who can not have and should not be a have graphical interpretation. "
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i) Miguel Covarrubias Caricatures, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 1985, pp 12ii) Ibid. P.20
iii) Hirschfeld, Al, Interview with Adriana Williams, New York, 1985.
iv) Van Vechten, Carl, The appraiser, Vol. 4 , 1923-4, (New York: Johnson Reprint Company, 1967): 103.
v) Van Vechten, Carl, firecracker, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925): 127 - 128th
vi) Barton, Ralph, preface to Negro Drawings by Miguel Covarrubias, (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1927).
vii) British Encyclopedia Britannica, 2o edition, sv "cartoon"
viii) Valentine Gallery Catalogue :. (New York, 1928)
ix) Romano, Arturo, (Mexican archaeologist). Interview with Adriana Williams, Mexico City, Apr. 1987
x) Caso, Alfonso, interview with Elena Poniatoska, Novedades, Mexico City May 1957.
xi) Coe, Michael, (American archaeologist) phone interview with Adriana Williams, November 1991.
xii) Rubin de la Borbollla, Boletín BIBLIOGRAFICA de Antropologia Americana, (Mexico city: Instituto de Geografía e Historia), p.138.
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