Bohème

Leaving Mexico for New York at the age of nineteen, Covarrubias began working as a caricaturist. His likenesses of celebrities and other famous figures appeared in such publications as Vanity Fair and the New Yorker throughout the 1920s. This drawing was made during the artist’s time in Paris in the late 1920s, during which he made contact with numerous artists and writers. The composition, which likely captures Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí and Japanese-American painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi seated with two women at a café table, references Paris’s “bohemian” art scene.

Covarrubias’s internationalism during the 1920s and 30s contrasted greatly with the regional focus of the Mexican School. After returning to Mexico in the 1940s, however, he turned much of his attention back to the customs and traditions of his native land.