Almost all of the modern Mexican artists painted them. Each one of them in their own style: Zárraga, Montenegro, Covarrubias, Tamayo, Frida Kahlo, María Izquierdo, Carlos Orozco Romero and Diego Rivera, who painted them many times. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Saturnino Herrán, who was one of Siqueiros’ most important mentors, painted a tehuana woman as a dramatic fgure with masculine features, wrapped in white cloud-like frills. In 1949 Siqueiros contributed two paintings with this subject matter. They are similar and were created almost at the same time, between November and December of that year. In both cases he depicts choreographic scenes. In the present lot, the movement of the six tehuanas is a slow dance, their placement in space is precise, almost geometric. Their colored skirts and their painted huipiles are very synthetic and at the same time are composed of intertwined colors and brushstrokes that provide volume and rhythm. Two of the dancers are with their backs to the viewer, one is in profle, one can be seen at a distance, but there are two that approach and look directly at the viewer. It looks as if the women are on top of an invisible mechanism that drives them from the frills in their skirts.
Years later, the frills on the same skirts will become truly dynamic whirlpools in the studies and the mural Siqueiros will execute for the Castle of Chapultepec in Mexico City. While painting the dancers of this sitespecifc work, he will have in mind the famous dancer Gatita Blanca, “La Conesa”, who danced for presidents and artists alike during the 1910 Mexican Revolution, as the sound of bullets echoed through the streets. The Juchiteca women in this painting do not wear frilly headdresses on their heads, as Frida Kahlo wears one in her self-portrait Diego en mis pensamientos (1943). With their braids tied on their heads, the fgures in Siqueiros’ painting wear spectacular robes with fowers, bouquets made of colorful explosions. Their arms held high are intertwined, while they are separated by the rhythm of the tune. The landscape is almost abstract, evoking the tropics, the beach and the turquoise of the sea. The sensual movement of this painting is full of colorful textures; it is a sof and rhythmical prologue that testifes to the process of creation of one of the fundamental facets of Siqueiros’ work, as an artist who was obsessed with dance and flm. The fgure of the tehuana is poised between exoticism and political commitment. It strikes a balance between both visions identifed with Mexico. Dr. Irene Herner Reiss
Diego Rivera. Baile en Tehuantepec. 1928. Oil on canvas. 79 x 64 ½ in. (200.7 x 163.8 cm) © 2017 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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