José Miguel Covarrubias

(José) Miguel Covarrubias (born November 22, 1904 in Mexico City ; † February 4, 1957 ibid), also called "El Chamaco" ( Spanish for "The Boy" ), was a Mexican painter, caricaturist , ethnologist and art historian .

Life

Covarrubias graduated from the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria and decided to paint and caricature. His caricatures were initially created in the city's theaters and cafes. At that time he was nicknamed "Chamaco Covarrubias" by his friend, the sculptor Ernesto Hidalgo . In 1920 he published his first ink caricature on the occasion of a review of Montenegro's first exhibition. As part of Adolfo Best Maugard's art program , he helped to illustrate the drawing manual, which was then distributed to primary school children in 1923 by the Secretaría de Educación Pública . Around 1923/1924 he went to New York City , where he caricatured for several magazines, including well-known magazines such as Vanity Fair , for which he worked until 1936. Here he married the Broadway dancer Rosa Roland Cowan , whom he had met through his friend, the photographer Nickolas Muray . In 1932 she accompanied him on his study trip through Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe, which had made a Guggenheim scholarship possible for him. In the same year they went to Mexico City, where Covarrubias taught ethnology at the National School of Anthropology and History of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). He represented u. a. diffusionist positions and referred to the similarities between ancient Central American art and Asian forms. In his essays on the art and culture of the Olmecs , he advocated the thesis of a final culture war between the "mother culture" and the Mayan culture. He had a deep friendship with the Austro-Mexican surrealist Wolfgang Paalen , who took up his theses and developed them further. Covarrubias published in Paalen's art magazine DYN . He later became director of the dance school at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes .

Exhibitions

• 2014/2015: Miguel Covarrubias: Drawing a Cosmopolitan Line . Georgia O'Keefe Museum , Santa Fe, USA.

Bibliography (selection)

• The Prince of Wales and Other Famous Americans , New York City (1935).
• The Bali Island , New York (1937), new edition: Periplus Editions, Hong Kong, no year ISBN 962-593-060-4 .
• México South , New York (1946).
• The Eagle and the Serpent , New York (1954).
• Indian Art of Mexicano and Central America , New York (1957).
• Exhibition catalog: Carolyn Kastner: Miguel Covarrubias: Drawing a Cosmopolitan Line , University of Texas Press, 2014.

Web links

• Literature by and about José Miguel Covarrubias in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nickolas Muray - Hungarian-American Photographer of Celebrities ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , sk-szeged.hu, accessed on March 28, 2014 
2. ^ Covarrubias, Miguel: Indian Art of Mexico and Central America , New York (Alfred A. Knopf), 1957
3. ↑ Miguel Covarrubias, "El Chamaco" ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Spanish).