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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Professor Luis-Martín Lozano for his assistance cataloguing this work.
Unequivocally the most well-known modern Mexican artist, Diego Rivera was instrumental in promoting a new notion of lo mexicano, or “Mexicanness,” that focused on contemporary Mexican identity as a source of national pride. Images of dark-skinned mestizos, day laborers, peasant children, and street vendors—historically underrepresented or forgotten subjects—featured prominently in Rivera’s diverse panorama of Mexican identity. The three works in Mr. Perenchio’s collection depict children as flower carriers or cargadores, one of the most iconic subjects in the artist’s oeuvre and a theme that at once reflected pre-Columbian traditions and the shifting social landscape of Mexico. As Anna Indych-López notes elsewhere in this publication, these images “allegorize the rural peasants who migrated and inundated the capital in the 1930s and who formed an integral part of the process of transforming it from an essentially agrarian locale into a sprawling metropolis.”
Unequivocally the most well-known modern Mexican artist, Diego Rivera was instrumental in promoting a new notion of lo mexicano, or “Mexicanness,” that focused on contemporary Mexican identity as a source of national pride. Images of dark-skinned mestizos, day laborers, peasant children, and street vendors—historically underrepresented or forgotten subjects—featured prominently in Rivera’s diverse panorama of Mexican identity. The three works in Mr. Perenchio’s collection depict children as flower carriers or cargadores, one of the most iconic subjects in the artist’s oeuvre and a theme that at once reflected pre-Columbian traditions and the shifting social landscape of Mexico. As Anna Indych-López notes elsewhere in this publication, these images “allegorize the rural peasants who migrated and inundated the capital in the 1930s and who formed an integral part of the process of transforming it from an essentially agrarian locale into a sprawling metropolis.”