Mezcala Stone Female Figure, Type M22

Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York (inv. no. G-25)

Isidor Kahane, New York, acquired from the above on May 6, 1958

Thence by descent

Miguel Covarrubias, Mezcala, Ancient Mexican Sculpture, Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, 1956, p. 15

Miguel Covarrubias and Andre Emmerich, “Mezcala Stone Sculpture,” in Craft Horizons, February, 1957, vol. XVII, n° 1, p. 25

Carlo Gay and Frances Pratt, Mezcala, Ancient Stone Sculpture from Guerrero, Mexico, Geneva, 1992, p. 217, Pl. 268b

Mezcala sculptors combined abstraction, stylization and naturalism particularly in the treatment of anthropomorphic figures. Axe-like stones carved with an expressive series of angles and grooves, transformed into ephemeral human forms which impressed 20^th century modernists such as Henry Moore for their timelessness.

This Mezcala figure, densely carved in speckled and polished diorite, exemplifies the use of the firm diagonal lines with the subtly rounded breasts, demarcated hands and the prominent, sharp-jawed head.

Females are rare among the corpus of Mezcala figural sculptures as most are asexual representations, not dissimilar to the majority of portable Olmec stone figures (Carlo Gay and Frances Pratt, Mezcala: Ancient Stone Sculpture from Mexico, Geneva, 1992, p. 101).

Mezcala was first studied in the 1920s by the Mexican artist and collector Miguel Covarrubias, who integrated a scholarly approach along with an artistic appreciation of the evocative lithic stones. Covarrubias included the present impressive example in his publication, Mezcala: Ancient Mexican Sculpture, 1956, p. 15. In the 1960s, Carlo T. E. Gay continued classifying the distinctive substyles. These efforts were brought to a fore in the historic exhibition, Mezcala Stone Sculpture: The Human Figure, at the Museum of Primitive Art in New York.

As Josef Albers aptly commented on the aesthetics of the art of early Mexico "…truly a lesson in the economy of artistic articulation, as art is an act of condensation" (Lauren Hinkson, Josef Albers in Mexico, 2017, p. 19).

For a close parallel, see Gay and Pratt, op. cit., pl. 268 a.