Alfredo Ramos Martínez

This delicately rendered portrait of is a testament to Ramos Martínez's pioneering role in Mexico's rediscovery of local traditions and the formulation of a "national" school of painting. The portrait also shows the powerful reciprocal influence that paintings by students in the Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre, such as Fernando Reyes's Dos figuras (ca. 1926, Blaisten Collection), had upon his work. The shallow pictorial space and cropping of the figure are all informed by the naïve manner of student works, but Ramos Martínez adds masterful modeling and delicate paint handling to create a sense of monumentality. The woman's impassive gaze contrasts with the attentive delineation of her bone structure, her sensuous mouth and shining dark eyes. In conjunction with the simple, chromatic harmonies, this reinforces a sense of grace and nobility that far transcends the quaint aspects of Reyes' painting. The carefully detailed vertical ribs of the organ cactus play off her gently rounded shoulders and the more impressionistically rendered brilliant red blossoms. When Ramos Martínez returned to Mexico in 1909 after spending nine years in Europe, his painting was steeped in manner of the impressionists. In the political context of the revolutionary decade, he was quick to recognize the need for more locally relevant subjects. He demonstrated that commitment by exposing his students at Academy to plein air painting, and by proving that Mexican scenes were worthy subjects for art. His commitment to rendering the nobility of Mexico's Indians remained strong even after he relocated to the US in 1929. Mancacoyota was probably painted in Los Angeles and it uses a compositional format he cultivated from the mid-1930s until his death in 1946. Though the meaning of the title is uncertain, Mancacoyota resembles the monumental portraits in his mural cycle at Scripps College, Claremont, California. Whether an actual person or a composite from his imagination, she was for Ramos Martínez the prototype of indigenous femininity, appearing not only in Indian Mother [Madre india] (1935; private collection), but in other paintings and studies completed in California.