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Irene Vallejo

@irenevalmore.bsky.social

#MuseoAModernoMX #México #RosaRolanda

📷 Retrato, por Edward Weston

January 14, 2025 at 5:28 PM

Michael

@mdstamper.bsky.social

Tehuana by Rosa Rolanda (American) - Oil on canvas / 1940 - Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Argentina) #womeninart #art #oilpainting #womanartist #femaleartist #RosaRolanda #artwork #portraitofawoman #womensart #MexicanArt #surrealism #MALBA #MuseodeArteLatinoamericanodeBuenosAires

This 1940 canvas by Rosa Rolanda depicts a young woman with extremely large almond-shaped eyes, beautiful deep brown skin, and rounded facial features. The subject, a girl from the isthmus of Tehuantepec, wears a huipil, a traditional dress of Indigenous Zapotec women.

Some consider the Zapotecs a matriarchal society, and Rolanda, like her friend Mexican artist Frida Kahlo who made huipil famous around the world, wore the huipil as a symbol of feminist resistance in a patriarchal twentieth-century Mexican society.

A hummingbird, an important symbol in Mayan creation myths, hangs like a pendant around the subject’s neck. This use of precontact iconography is characteristic of Mexican Modernism, in which many artists looked to indigeneity to create a revolutionary and culturally decolonized Mexican identity.

Although Rolanda described herself as a neo-figurative artist, it can be argued that "Tehuana" is influenced by the political project of Mexican Muralism – which often portrayed idealized depictions of Indigenous people and children, to embody a “pure” Mexican identity – and its modern style of figuration.

Rolanda was born Rosemonde Cowan in the U.S. to a Scottish father and mother of Mexican descent. A dancer, actress, and photographer in addition to a painter, she met Miguel Covarrubias in New York in the 1920s, and the couple moved to Mexico in 1926. Through Covarrubias, whom she married in 1930, Rolanda became part of a circle of Mexican artists that included Diego Rivera, Frida Kalho, and Roberto Montenegro.

In the late 1930s, she began experimenting with painting, exploring an array of techniques in a style that combined elements of surrealism and the modern figuration characteristic of Mexican muralism. Rolanda’s preferred themes were popular celebrations and portraits. She claimed she painted only for pleasure, and she sold her work exclusively to her circle of friends; since she did not like exhibiting, her painterly facet was largely unknown.

March 10, 2025 at 6:31 AM

Michael

@mdstamper.bsky.social

Autorretrato (Self-portrait) by Rosa Rolanda (American) - Oil on canvas / 1952 - Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico City) #womeninart #fineart #selfportrait #womanartist #art #portrait #womensart #RosaRolanda #oilpainting #portraitofawoman #MuseodeArteModerno #rolanda #artwork #surrealism #modernart

Rosa Rolanda was born to a Scottish father and Mexican mother in Azusa, California as Rosemonde Cowan. She was an accomplished American professional ballerina, excellent choreographer, photographer, actor, and painter who lived a lot of her life in Mexico.

After moving to New York in 1916, she adopted her stage name, Rosa Rolanda, as her legal name and began a solo career, touring Europe as part of the Ziegfeld Follies. Upon her return to the States, she met her husband, Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias, during her final performance of Rancho Mexicano. The two married in 1930 and settled in Mexico where Rolanda produced a body of work that intersected with newly formed ideologies of the Mexican Revolution in art and transnational modern artistic trends.

Her 1952 Autorretrato offers the timeless image of a woman feeling desolation and abandonment after Rosa’s husband left for her young protégé.

Clad in the green and red of the Mexican flag plus a belt that girded her thin waist with a buckle of the national seal, the eagle and the serpent, Rosa stares directly at us with a solemn expression in the face of pain, even though her hair is loose and agitated by the wind, and her posture—especially her raised arms that form irregular angles, and her hands with which she seems to try, uselessly, to hold her head over the asymmetric axis of her body—denotes an intense anemic agitation.

The background is full of motifs that show the contrast between several of the happy and painful events of her life in Mexico, especially those related to the world of dance that originally brought her together with Covarrubias and would eventually separate the couple. On the right side of the painting, the Mexican flag situates the place of pain, while a very Mexican skeleton tries to offer her some comfort with slight taps on the forehead.

January 27, 2025 at 6:42 AM

Michael

@mdstamper.bsky.social

Autorretrato by Rosa Rolanda (American) - Gouache on paper / c. 1940 - Museo Colección Blaisten (Mexico City) #womeninart #femaleartist #womensart #womanartist #womenartists #RosaRolanda #rolanda #Gouache #MuseoColecciónBlaisten #art #artwork #selfportrait #portraitofawoman #artist #autorretrato

Rose Cowan, later Rosa Rolanda, was born in the United States, September 6, 1895. Her father was an American engineer and her mother, Guadalupe Ruelas, who had been born in Azusa, CA, to Mexican parents. She always insisted on having her own way.

Rosa had a gift for sculpture and excelled in physical education, her teachers encouraged her to study dance. She was chosen between three hundred students to perform with the Marion Morgan Dancers in New York in 1916. Rosa had joined the cast of Irving Berlin´s Music Box Revue.

Later, she met Mexican painter, Miguel Covarrubias in the United States. With Covarrubias, Rosa spent much time with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and other important artists in Mexico who encouraged her to paint. In the late 1930s, some years after her marriage with Covarrubias, she began to paint basically portraits of friends, children and indigenous women, mostly in goauche, sometimes in oil.

Her first portrait was painted in 1938, of Mexican actress Dolores del Río while another famous work is a large oil of Mexican singer/actress María Félix. Rolanda considered herself as neo-figurative as we see in this wonderful self-portrait from 1940.

The artist depicts herself in a style reminiscent of folk art with colors that are "flat' and solid more than subtly shaded although the brushstrokes are visible to create texture. It conveys a sense of dignity mixed with beauty and intrigue.

Depicted from the shoulders up, she has magnificent dark brown skin, short dark hair pulled back neatly, and a calm direct expression. Her features are somewhat simplified and idealized with especially large and expressive light-brown almond eyes and full burgundy lips. Atop her head, she wears a symbolic stylized headpiece with brownish-gold leopard-skin petals. On the left edge of the white canvas is another symbolic element of a small black fly on the wall.

April 29, 2025 at 5:24 PM

tomfishpaw.bsky.social

@tomfishpaw.bsky.social

#RosaRolanda

Self-portrait, (1940)

July 24, 2025 at 12:10 AM

tomfishpaw.bsky.social

@tomfishpaw.bsky.social

#RosaRolanda
Self-Portrait (1952)

July 15, 2025 at 11:30 PM

Silvia Seixas Naia 🐙🦀

@silviaseixasnaia.bsky.social

🎨Mulleres… bon día!
©️Rose Cowan, posteriormente #RosaRolanda, naceu nos Estados Unidos en 1895.

Na súa pintura retrata principalmente mulleres indíxenas,nenas ,festas populares e autorretratos. Explorou distintas técnicas e materiais, como o gouache,o óleo,a acuarela e o crayón.

Autorretrato,1952