Miguel Covarrubias

* Miguel Covarrubias (Mexican, 1904-1957) Tap Dancer ink wash signed Covarrubias (lower right) 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches. Estimate $ 3,000-5,000 Property from the Estate of Katrina McCormick Barnes, Santa Fe, New Mexico Moderate mat burn; light surface dirt, especially lower right edge and upper left center; very light foxing marks isolated at right edge and upper left edge; hinged from top at center and corners; framer's notes in pencil along lower edge of sheet; see images. Sheet: 11 1/2 x 9 inches. Framed: 15 3/4 x 12 3/4 inches.

MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS (Mexican, 1904-1957) The Rice Granary signed 'Covarrubias' (lower left) watercolour and charcoal on paper 55 x 42 cm. (21 5?8 x 16 1?2 in.) Private Collection, Belgium This artwork is accompanied by a letter confirming its authenticity from Adriana Williams dated 17 October 2012 Miguel Covarrubias was a man of many talents - the 20th century caricaturist, illustrator, painter and writer is widely regarded as Mexico's 'Renaissance Man', whose accomplishments in the visual arts realm through his book, The Island of Bali and his many paintings give both art connoisseurs and lay-people alike an invaluable look into the cultural and anthropological aspects of Bali. In the early 1930s, Covarrubias and his wife made two trips to Bali, one on their honeymoon, and one subsequent trip a few years later. Despite spending only twenty months on the island, Covarrubias was so inspired that he created an impressive oeuvre of paintings on the island, as well as a 400-page book, The Island of Bali, lauded as a classic. Covarrubias had expressed many times his enchantment with the women of Bali, calling them "stately and graceful as goddesses, tawny-skinned with dark glowing eyes, proud mouths, erect bearing", and his paintings of Balinese women performing their daily tasks are without question some of the greatest insights that one can have of Balinese culture in the 1930s. The Rice Granary (Lot 185) is a particularly excellent example of the above from Covarrubias' time in Bali, and gives the viewer potent look into the lives of Balinese women, and their relationship with each other. Covarrubias produced at least four non-editioned versions of The Rice Granary, the first of which was illustrated in his book, Island of Bali. The present lot is the watercolour and charcoal version. These are in addition to lithographic prints produced. The two girls in the present version are clad in blue and magenta, and make the present version arguably the most outstanding amongst the four in terms of colours. These paintings are set in unremarkable locations, places where he regularly found these women - the temple, for instance, performing ordinary actions - and yet, Covarrubias manages to bring about a stunning sense of the extraordinary in the benign, drawing the viewer into the picture, to the focused images of the women, brightly dressed against their drab surroundings.

Miguel Covarrubias (Mexican 1904-1957) Impossible Interviews a.) Clark Gables and Edward, the Prince of Wales signed 'COVARRUBIAS' (lower left) gouache on paper 21 1/8 x 17¾ in. (53.6 x 45 cm.) b.) Marie of Romania and Mae West signed 'COVARRUBIAS' (lower right) gouache on paper 19 5/8 x 17¼ in. (50 x 43.8 cm.) Two in one lot. As early as 1923, the year he began working for Vanity Fair magazine, Miguel Covarrubias found himself irresistibly drawn to the world of movies. He was as star-struck and as movie-crazy as anyone else in the 1920s and 30s and contributed many caricatures of Hollywood to the magazine. Covarrubias' most popular series and inventive work for Vanity Fair were done for "The Impossible Interviews" with text by Corey Ford. In several, he paired well-known public figures that would never be seen together, as in these two: The handsome movie idol Clark Gable with the secret heartthrob of romantic women the Prince of Wales [1]; and the torrid and campy Mae West with the formidable Queen Marie of Romania. More than any other artist of his times, he was able to capture and portray the idiosyncrasies and extravagances of those mortals whom the public idolized as deities. Adriana Williams Covarrubias biographer 1) There is another version of the drawing Impossible Interview: Clark Gable vs. Edward, Prince of Wales in the collection of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. 2) The actress Dolores del Río - first owner of these "Interviews" - a close friend of Rosa and Miguel Covarrubias. Both artists painted del Río and she was a frequent guest at their home in Tizapán, Mexico.

Miguel Covarrubias (Mexican 1904-1957) Bather Holding Up Her Kemban signed 'COVARRUBIAS' (lower right) gouache on masonite 29¾ x 29¾ in. (75.5 x 75.5 cm.) Executed circa 1934. Helena Rubinstein collection, New York. The Collection of Helena Rubinstein, Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc., New York, 27 April 1966, lot 663. Selected Artists Galleries Inc., New York. John Brady Jr. collection, Des Moines, Iowa. Gift from the above (1989). PROPERTY FROM THE ROBERT BRADY MUSEUM FOUNDATION L. García-Noriega y Nieto, ed., Miguel Covarrubias: Homenaje, Mexico City, Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporáneo, Fundación Cultural Televisa, 1987, p. 102 (illustrated in color). Mexico City, Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporáneo, Fundación Cultural Televisa, Miguel Covarrubias: Homenaje, February- May 1987. This work is sold with a certificate of authenticity signed by Adriana Williams and dated 23 March 2012. Miguel Covarrubias's fascination with Bali originated with his first trip to the Indonesian island in 1930. He traveled there from New York with his wife, Rosa Rolando, on their honeymoon. Spending six months on the island, the Mexican artist took extensive notes and made numerous sketches while Rosa Rolando took hundreds of documentary photographs of Bali life and customs. During the long voyage home on an ocean liner, Covarrubias produced gouaches and oil paintings based on his sketches and his recollections.[1] Covarrubias exhibited thirty-two of these gouaches and oil paintings on Balinese themes at the Valentine Gallery in New York in an exhibition that opened on January 18, 1932. This series and exhibition represent a significant turning point in the artist's career. Celebrated as a highly-regarded caricaturist during the 1920s in New York City--where he had moved in 1923 at the young age of nineteen--Covarrubias was known for his humorous and biting satires of the city's social and political elite as well as for his so-called "negro drawings" and observations of Harlem social life. With the support of leading New Yorkers Frank Crowninshield and Carl Van Vechten, Covarrubias had become a contributor to magazines for the social set such as Vanity Fair, Vogue, and The New Yorker. In addition to its shift in thematic focus, the 1932 Valentine exhibition represents a turn away from illustration and a move toward painting, on which he would increasingly focus his energies. His interest in Bali would also serve as the starting point for the production of ethnographic, pictorial travelogues. A Guggenheim Fellowship provided him with some of the funds to return to Bali in 1933 in order to continue his investigations, specifically for a book manuscript, which Alfred A. Knopf would eventually publish as Island of Bali in 1937. Covarrubias remained on the island for a year. During his voyage home to New York, where he arrived in December 1934, he again completed several more paintings on Balinese themes. He also made significant progress on the book manuscript, which he had been planning since the first trip.[2] Life magazine and Vanity Fair reported on Covarrubias's work on Bali, which inspired a "Balinese vogue" among fashionable New Yorkers as epitomized by the window displays at the Fifth Avenue department store, Franklin Simon, which included fabric designs with Bali prints by the artist. Even before Island of Bali's appearance in mid-November 1937, Knopf ordered a second printing to satisfy demand. Bather Holding Up Her Kemban depicts themes at the heart of Island of Bali- bathing and the romanticized depiction of Bali's inhabitants and its landscape. In his exegesis on the customs of everyday life, Covarrubias expounds on the centrality of bathing in Balinese culture and the etiquette followed by women to avoid nudity in public baths.[3] The gouache, however, isolates a female bather and depicts her fully in the nude, making clear that his paintings were divorced from the pseudo-anthropological observations he put forth in his chronicles. Despite these differences, Covarrubias idealized Bali as a pristine and enchanted land that embodied a vision of social harmony and beauty. The gouache encapsulates the ways in which Covarrubias was drawn to the exoticism of the "South Sea Island paradise." As such, like the European traveler artists who came to Latin America in the nineteenth century, Covarrubias reinvented his own form of a pictorial costumbrismo for the modern age.[4] Dr. Anna Indych-López, Associate Professor of Art History, The City College of New York and The Graduate Center, The City University of New York 1) Adriana Williams, Covarrubias (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 69. 2) Williams, Covarrubias, 80 and 82. 3) Miguel Covarrubias, Island of Bali (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973; originally published in 1937), 116-118. 4) Terence Grieder, "The Divided World of Miguel Covarrubias," Americas (Washington D.C.) vol 23 , no. 5, (May 1971): 24, cited in Williams, 84.

Lot 529 Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957) MEXICAN STREET SCENE Lithograph, circa 1940, signed and inscribed A.P. in pencil, aside from the edition of 250, published by Associated American Artists, New York, lightstain and matstain, some old glue residue with associated staining in the margins (showing through to recto), otherwise in good condition, with good margins, framed. 12 1/2 x 9 7/8 inches; 318 x 251 mm. Sheet 14 7/8 x 11 3/8 inches; 378 x 289 mm. C Estimate $500-700 Any condition statement is given as a courtesy to a client, is only an opinion and should not be treated as a statement of fact. Doyle New York shall have no responsibility for any error or omission. The absence of a condition statement does not imply that the lot is in perfect condition or completely free from wear and tear, imperfections or the effects of aging.