Carmen Mondragón
María del Carmen Mondragón Valseca (born July 8, 1893 in Tacubaya , today a district of Mexico City , † January 23, 1978 in Mexico City) was a Mexican model , muse , painter and poet. She was particularly known under the name "Nahui Olín" .
Life
Carmen Mondragón was the fifth of eight children of general and politician Manuel Mondragón and enjoyed a privileged education in Mexico and from 1897 to 1905 in France. Her mother was Mercedes Valseca . After 1905 the family went to Spain with the father for business reasons. There she met the cadet Manuel Rodríguez Lozano , whom she married on August 6, 1913. Although her father lived with his family in exile in Belgium from 1913 after the events of the Decena Trágica in his home country, the bloodiest fighting in the Mexican Revolution , Carmen Mondragón went to Paris with her husband. In Paris, the two also met Pablo Picasso , Henri Matisse and Jean Cassou . The young couple later settled in San Sebastián , where Carmen's brother Manuel had his own photo studio. Here Carmen Mondragón and her husband began to paint. Various reasons are suspected for the end of the relationship in 1920, including the bisexual disposition of the painter, who also had a relationship with Antonieta Rivas Mercado , as well as Mondragón's nymphomaniac inclination or the fact that Mondragón had killed their child.
After Mondragón's return in 1921, she turned to the artistic scene in Mexico. Manuel Rodríguez Lozano also returned to Chapultepec , but the two went their separate ways. It is not known whether the two ever divorced. Mondragón maintained contacts with José Vasconcelos and Xavier Villaurrutia and was interested in the "Ulises" theater founded by Antonio Rivas Mercado , Salvador Novo and Villaurrutia. Mondragón had multiple sexual relationships with men. Her beauty was described by contemporaries as mesmerizing and erotic. She was the first woman in Catholic Mexico to wear a mini skirt and modeled for well-known painters and photographers, for example for several murals by Diego Riveras , for Tina Modotti , Antonio Garduño , Roberto Montenegro , Matías Santoyo , Edward Weston and around 1928 at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes for Ignácio Rosas . Her files became particularly well known . One of her former French teachers recognized her and published the book A dix ans sur mon pupitre in 1924 , in which he depicts the ten-year-old student Mondragón from his point of view.
She had a long and very intense relationship with Gerald Murillo alias Dr. Atl , who gave her the name Nahui Olín . "Nahui-Olín" means "four earthquakes" and is the name of the fifth and present sun in Aztec mythology . She lived with Murillo in the former De la Merced monastery. During this time she wrote her poems “Óptica cerebral, poemas dinámicos” (1922) and “Calinement je suis dedans” (1923) as well as several naive paintings. She also composed. The relationship with Murillo ended as intense as it began in the mid-1920s. She later denied the relationship. After numerous other love affairs, "Nahui Olín" withdrew from public life in the 1940s. As with Frida Kahlo , public interest in her and her life only grew later.
Together with Guadalupe Marín , Antonieta Rivas Mercado, Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, Lupe Vélez and María Izquierdo , Mondragón belonged to the group of talented women of the revolutionary, activist and creative 1920s and 1930s Mexico. Carmen Mondragón gained notoriety through her beauty as a model of well-known artists and her biography, less because of her painterly works or because of her poems. She herself described her art as intuitive . In her self-portraits she depicted her green eyes oversized, but they also appear highlighted in many paintings by other artists. Many of her own paintings are undated.
From June 22 to September 2, 2007, the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago exhibited her works as part of the exhibition A Woman Beyond Time / Nahui Olin: una mujer fuera del tiempo .
literature
- Adriana Malvido : Nahui Olin, la mujer del sol , ISBN 84-7765-206-6 , ISBN 978-84-7765-206-9
- Pino Cacucci : Nahui , 2005, ISBN 88-07-01686-9
- Dr. Atl: Gentes Profanas En El Convento , ISBN 970-727-034-9 , ISBN 978-970-727-034-3
Web links
- Literature by and about Carmen Mondragón in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin
Individual evidence
- ^ The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Nahui Olín
- ↑ Las hijas del porfiriato (Spanish), July 25, 2007.
- ↑ Primera exposición para descubrir el valor de la obra de Agustín Jiménez (second photo from above) in LaJornada , October 25, 2007.
- ↑ Hernando Hernández Pérez: Nahui Olin (I) (Spanish), September 13, 2007.
- ↑ Hernando Hernández Pérez: Nahui Olin (II) (Spanish), September 14, 2007.
- ↑ Erin Cassin: The Fiery Spirit of Carmen Mondragón (English), 2005.
- ↑ Enrique López Aguilar: Así te fuiste, Nahui, tan collando ... (Spanish), LaJornada, UNAM.
- ↑ also used: Carmen Mondragón in the Spanish language Wikipedia in the version of August 19, 2008, 12:17 am
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mondragón, Carmen |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mondragón Valseca, María del Carmen (full name); Ollin, Nahui |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Mexican model, muse, painter and poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 8, 1893 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Tacubaya , now part of Mexico City |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 23, 1978 |
| Place of death | Mexico city |