SURREALIST PAINTING Folklore SYMBOLISM Mystery Artist Vintage MID-CENTURY MODERN

Description: Vintage 19 3/4 x 20 inch painting (21 3/8 x 22 inches overall with tacking margins) is unsigned and unmounted. Depicted is a man who appears to be dancing with some sort of bird. Needs stretcher bars. I'll pack it flat with good padding in a box and insure it. Ships USPS (post office). I've deduced that this painting, before I got it, was part of a NYC storage unit buy, like you see on the TV show Storage Wars. The buyer of the unit was obviously a reseller but doesn't mess around trying to sell stuff online, rather just consigns the items to a country auction that I happen to go to. At the country auction, everything sells fast, in one day. These aren't cataloged auctions. And, the auction will not tell anyone the name of the consignor, because they're not giving up their sources. When I first saw this painting, I thought of Marc Chagall. Not that I've ever had one. If I did, I'd be a millionaire, right? I checked by doing a Google Images Search, which doesn't usually do much for me, but I'm pretty sure it would at least let us discover if this painting is a copy of a Chagall. As far as Google can tell, it isn't a copy of anything. Yes, Chagall paintings came up in the search, but not this image. One that came up was: "The Horseman, 1966. Oil on canvas. Milwaukee Art Museum". The other thing I thought of on this painting is that something about it feels Mexican to me. It's not like the man in the painting is wearing a sombrero. There's probably no such thing as a Mexican Chicken Dance. But, I'm seeing the painting like a Mexican Chagall, which might sound funny or maybe there's something to it. At the very least, I think there's a folklore element going on. Marc Chagall was in Mexico. He also lived here in the States for a while and otherwise visited here. Chagall was such a major artist that I'd feel uncomfortable saying that I think this painting is by him. So, I looked at artists working in Mexico to see if anybody else was doing work like this. It's obviously not Frida Kahlo, although she too had folklore and dreamlike imagery in her work. I'm not sure what exact art-term the scholars pin on the artists but I see this as Surrealism. In this painting, the male figure appears to be stepping over a building like a house or church and that's not realistic, so it's surrealistic. She's not as famous as Chagall and Kahlo but another Surrealist type of artist who lived in Mexico was Leonora Carrington. No two paintings are the same and Carrington was an artist who worked in different styles (sometimes tight, sometimes loose) but the thought behind this painting is, in a way, more like Carrington than Chagall. See pictures posted of some Carrington paintings so that you can compare. She lived in Mexico, but at times, in the 1960's and 1980's, she lived in New York City. The size of this painting is odd. Why 19 3/4 x 20 instead of 20 x 20? That makes me think it could've been painted in a place other than the USA, like Mexico. The background in the painting is pretty abstract. It's like 4 pyramids meet in the middle to form an "X" shape while there's a vague "O" shape that the human figure is within. If I'm right about a Mexican Surrealism thing going on with the painting offered here, I'd suggest it's religious in nature and also relates to a certain ceremony done down in Mexico. I can only think to describe this in terms of Frida because she's so representative of art and culture in Mexico. Some sources state that Frida Kahlo was a Mestizo (person of mixed European and Indigenous non-European ancestry in the former Spanish Empire). Other sources say that Frida had no Indigenous bloodline at all. Either way, her mother, Matilde Calderón y González, was from Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. Tzotzil is a Mayan language spoken in the Mexican states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Veracruz. The Tzotzil people of Mexico have a certain ritual they do which might not be something I should go into full detail about on this venue we're on. I'll say what I can, though. The Tzotzil conceive the World as a square, at whose center is the "navel", a mound of earth located in the ceremonial center. The world rests on the shoulders of the Vashak, analogous to the Four-Corner Gods or Sky-Bearers of the ancient Maya. This cosmic model is reflected in the ceremonial circuits around houses and fields performed by priests, which proceed counterclockwise around the four corners and end in the center, where offerings are made to the gods. From one story I read, the ritual I mentioned is done in a church, pungent with incense and smoky, lit only by candles and with wax running all over the floor. Little stations are set up around the room, attended by a shaman. Their patients are those who need treatment not for a physical ailment, but a loss of spirit. After the shaman takes a pulse reading, he or she decides on what candle to light in order to solve the problem. Also, what animal will be involved, such as birds, like chickens. The people are Catholic and are doing this in a church, where there are of course Bibles. The Mexicanidad movement sought to unite a divided country by developing a sense of Mexican identity that embraced the country's pre-Hispanic indigenous cultures. Artists like Frida were a part of the movement. She's an obvious example. Frida adopted the traditional dress of the women in Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. She didn't always dress that way. I think she started doing that ca. 1930. In the 1930s, Kahlo came to see the Indigenous people of Mexico, including the Aztecs and Zapotecs (Zapotec population is concentrated in the southern state of Oaxaca), as wholesome and earthy cultures living in harmony with nature. The Zapotecs were a liberal society by modern standards. From earliest pre-Hispanic times to the present day in Oaxaca, they have acknowledged three genders: female, male and muxe. Mexica pronounced (meh-shee-ka) is a broad term used to refer to the collective of Mexican area Indigenous peoples of which there are many. A symbol of the Mexica people looks a lot like the background layout of the painting offered here. See picture posted. The symbol is both an animal design (Water Spider or Butterfly) and a 'Five Directions' design. The symbol appears in both the Codex Magliabechiano and Codex Tudela which were produced in the 1500s in Central Mexico. The center is the direction of fire, the east is the direction of the rising sun, north is the direction of the land of the dead, west is the direction of the women, and south is the direction of thorns. In addition to the five directions, the water spider is also laid out stylistically to depict the xicalcoliuhqui (twisted gourd), which is very widespread in Mexico in various configurations. The xicalcoliuhqui is intended to show parts of the water spider as a complementary duality that is in balance. One thing about Leonora Carrington is that she created a lot of paintings with birds. A theory on that is the concept that certain birds possess human souls. This painting is unsigned, so I don't know who did it. It could be an artist like Chagall or Carrington or a lesser known painter. To me, the background is an abstracted Mexica symbol (water spider, twisted gourd, five directions, etc.) and at the same time it represents the perception of the world or cosmic model (a square, naval at center, etc.). The narrative is a ceremony or ritual as done in the church by the people in Oaxaca which involves a shaman, birds, smoke from incense or candle flames, etc. That's my read on it.

Price: 895 USD

Location: Pitman, New Jersey

End Time: 2024-08-30T21:50:11.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD