Diego Rivera explored the genre of portraiture through a variety of pictorial languages: cubism, as well as the lessons from Ingres, Cézanne, and Renoir acquired during his years in Europe. When he repatriated to Mexico in 1921, invited by the Minister of Education, José Vasconcelos, Rivera inserted himself in an ambitious cultural project that emerged from the Revolution of 1910; when he discovered a country that had been unknown to him. Joining a cultural mission to discover the Mexican southeast, the incipient muralist marveled at everything he had not seen and was particularly fascinated by the banks of the Juchitán River on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
From that experience came hundreds of drawings and sketches that filled his notebooks, from which countless paintings and watercolors were subsequently produced. Rivera returned to Tehuantepec on several occasions, as had myriad artists and travelers since the 19th century. With the advent of Mexico’s post-revolutionary nationalism, the distinctive cost.mes s of the Tehuana women of the region became iconic emblems of mexicanidad, appearing on calendars, in musicals and even at the movies; the women of the Isthmus were immortalized in one of the most famous films of the period, Sergei Eisenstein’s ¡Que viva México! of 1930-32.
More than any other painter, Diego Rivera elevated Mexico’s indigenous peoples into legitimate artistic subjects, rendering them as protagonists of their own history, heirs to a millennial past and the legitimate inhabitants of modern Mexico. This ideological discourse, by an artist committed to the causes of the most deprived, manifested again in 1950 when - already 64 years old and having consolidated an international career as the most recognized of the Mexican muralists - Rivera executed a splendid portrait: that of the film actress Columba Domínguez dressed as a Tehuana. By then, Columba’s native beauty had already been captured for posterity by the photographer Gabriel Figueroa in the film, Pueblerina (1948), under the direction of Emilio “el Indio” Fernández.
In this portrait, Rivera represents Columba as a bastion of strength, her serene and dignified demeanor characteristic of a people that survived conquest and systemic exploitation for more than 400 years. For Rivera, these are the men and women who inherit the social changes of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and are the actors who built modern Mexico. Rivera’s mastery as a portraitist is revealed in the exceptional naturalism found in Columba’s feet: while one foot stands firmly on the ground, marking a footprint, the other one behind it seems to hardly rise alluding to the walking rhythm of short steps that distinguishes the women from Juchitán, whose legs are traditionally tangled in a narrow skirt (Bisu'udi Renda) inked in cochineal red from pre-Hispanic t.mes s.
Lastly, Rivera conceals her chest with a short blouse, a huipil, profusely embroidered with gold threads that recall the Plateresque designs of colonial churches. Her delicate features contrast with the sensual forms of a pumpkin "gourd" that she carries, while she walks with playful balance. Her profile, delineated like that of a Zapotec deity, stands out against the exuberance of an imagined tropic, in a vision of nostalgia for a rural Mexico that was already disappearing. The portrait is a memory of a lost paradise that the painter first discovered thirty years before, and which is now recovered for an instant, in an iconic image for the history of art. This central moment is immortalized by the legend inscribed on the tree leaf that gently falls on the ground: "Columba Domínguez de Fernández, an actress who is a deep and pure expression of Mexico, was painted here in April 1950 by Diego Rivera."
Luis-Martín Lozano
Art Historian
This almost life-sized portrait by Diego Rivera seems at first glance to be a straightforward, naturalistic, and seductive rendition of an indigenous woman in the countryside. She is captured barefoot as if walking down an earthy slope, silhouetted against a luxurious field of tropical vegetation: feathery branches seem almost to spring from her torso. The text elegantly inscribed on the leaf at the lower left includes the title and date, a quaint device reminiscent of the banners or pieces of paper that appear in Rivera’s other portraits.
A closer reading reveals that the painting is actually a study in pure artifice. The subject is the Mexican film actress Columba Domínguez (1929-2014), dressed in the traditional cost.mes of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and posing before a theatrical backdrop, similar to those in a photographer’s studio. Domínguez’s hair is braided with magenta-colored yarn and tied up in typical indigenous fashion. She wears a loose huipil of the same color, richly embroidered in gold with a floral design, like those still worn by tehuanas on the Isthmus today. Her tightly-fitted and softly striped skirt is known as an enredo, hand-woven from cotton threads separately dyed with indigo and sea snail to create a rich purplish-blue color. This particular skirt had almost disappeared by the 1940s, and perhaps only anthropologists would have appreciated its rarity when this picture was made. Domínguez holds a dried gourd (guaje) in the palm of her raised left hand; its elegant rounded forms clearly evoke her own, underscoring her sensuality and fertility, and perhaps alluding to the t.mes worn equation of woman and vessel, seen also in Picasso’s Three Women at the Spring (1921).
By 1950, Diego Rivera had painted several portraits of leading actresses, including Paulette Goddard (1940), Linda Christian (1947), María Félix (1948), and Silvia Pinal (1948), although the present image is the least eroticized of the group. Columba Domínguez had just appeared in a rapid-fire succession of films by the Mexican director Emilio “El Indio” Fernández, including “La Perla” (1947), “Río Escondido” (1948), and “Pueblerina” (1949). Though none of those movies were set in Tehuantepec, Rivera’s painting—commissioned soon after Domínguez and Fernández were married—evokes a similarly nostalgic idealization of rural culture at a t.mes of rapid urbanization and industrialization during the sexenio of Miguel Alemán (1946–52).
Diego Rivera’s Starlets: Portraits of Golden-Age Actresses, 1940-1950
Rather than hint at the subject’s own origins—she was born in the port of Guaymas, Sonora, on the Gulf of California—the particular cost.mes
worn by Domínguez places her portrait within a broader fascination with the Isthmus of Tehuantepec that dates to the early decades of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Rivera’s painting falls squarely within a visual tradition first set in place by Claudio Linati in his 1828 lithographic album Cost.mes
s civils, militaires et réligieux du Mexique, where a young and sexualized tehuana also stands barefoot in a natural setting. Since then, the tehuana has been invented and reinvented as authentic, tropical, and exotic, her matriarchal powers exaggerated and her life wrapped in myth by travelers as well as residents of Mexico City, from Saturnino Herrán to Sergei Eisenstein. Rivera’s specific interest in tehuanas began in December 1922, when José Vasconcelos, his patron in the Ministry of Public Education, funded the artist’s first trip to Tehuantepec, hoping that the Mexican might re-discover his nationalist roots. His first images of tehuanas, both in murals and easel paintings, date to 1923, and they soon became an iconographic constant in his work, evident in such genre scenes as Dance in Tehuantepec (1928). By 1950, Columba Domínguez was only the latest urban woman to enact the role of the tehuana for public consumption. The most famous of these was Frida Kahlo, of course, though one should also include here the wives of other leading artists, including Olga Tamayo and painter and photographer Rosa Rolando de Covarrubias, as well as Lupe Vélez, the star of the 1938 film “La Zandunga.”
James Oles
Senior Lecturer & Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art, The Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts
D urante su trayectoria artística, Diego Rivera exploró el retrato con diversos lenguajes artísticos, incluyendo al cubismo y las lecciones de Ingres, Cézanne y Renoir, durante los años que vivió en Europa. Al repatriarse en 1921, invitado por el Ministro de Educación, José Vasconcelos, Rivera se insertó en un ambicioso proyecto cultural surgido de la Revolución mexicana de 1910 y descubrió un país que, hasta entonces, le había sido desconocido. Sumándose a una misión cultural para conocer el sudeste mexicano, el incipiente muralista se maravilló de todo cuanto no había visto y, particularmente, quedó fascinado con las riberas del Río Juchitán en el Istmo de Tehuantepec.
De aquella experiencia surgieron cientos de dibujos que tomó en sus libretas de apuntes, y de estas salieron incontables pinturas y acuarelas que produjo los siguientes años. Rivera regresó a Tehuantepec en varias ocasiones, como así lo hicieron innumerables artistas y viajeros desde el siglo XIX. Pero con el nacionalismo posrevolucionario, las “tehuanas” se convirtieron en una imagen icónica de México, apareciendo con su indumentaria en calendarios, musicales e incluso billetes; en el cine, las mujeres del Istmo quedarían inmortalizadas en las escenas filmadas por el director ruso, Sergei Eisenstein, para su película ¡Viva México!, entre 1930/32.
Como ningún otro pintor, Diego Rivera convirtió al indígena en sujeto del arte, en protagonista de la historia, heredero de un pasado milenario y habitante legítimo de estas tierras que se llaman México. Este discurso ideológico, de un artista comprometido con las causas de los más desposeídos, estará de nuevo presente en 1950 cuando —contando ya con 64 años de edad y habiendo consolidado una carrera internacional como el más reconocido de los muralistas mexicanos—, Rivera ejecutó un espléndido retrato: el de la actriz de cine Columba Domínguez vestida como una Tehuana y cuya belleza, autóctona, ya había sido capturada para la posteridad por el fotógrafo Gabriel Figueroa en el film, Pueblerina (1948), bajo la dirección de Emilio, “el indio”, Fernández.
En su retrato, Rivera ha decidido que Columba sea un baluarte de la fortaleza que existe en la mujer mexicana, pues aunque pinta su cuerpo diminuto, este se alza con un porte de serena dignidad, propio de una raza que ha sobrevivido la conquista y la explotación por más de 400 años. Para Rivera, estos son los hombres y mujeres que heredan los cambios sociales de la Revolución mexicana de 1910 y son los actores que construyen el México moderno. El gran oficio del maestro se revela en el magistral naturalismo del detalle con que están pintados los pies, pues mientras uno se planta firme en el suelo, marcando la pisada, el de atrás apenas se levanta y emprende el ritmo andariego de cortos pasos de las mujeres de Juchitán, cuyas piernas se envuelven con una falda de enredo (Bisu’udi Renda) entintada en grana cochinilla desde tiempos prehispánicos.
Cubre su pecho con una corta blusa llamada “Huipil”, profusamente bordada con hilos de oro que recuerdan los diseños platerescos de las iglesias coloniales. El rostro, de su hermosa altivez, contraste con las formas sensuales de un “guaje” de calabaza que carga, mientras camina, con juguetón equilibrio. Su perfil, de deidad zapoteca, se recorta contra la exuberancia de un trópico imaginado, en una visión de nostalgia por un México rural que, para esas fechas, iría desapareciendo. El retrato es memoria de un paraíso perdido que el pintor descubrió treinta años atrás, recuperado por un instante, en una magna imagen para la historia del arte. Y como tal, el artista lo dejó asentado en una hoja de árbol que cae sobre el suelo: “Columba Domínguez de Fernández actriz que es honda y pura expresión de México fue pintada aquí el mes de abril de mil novecientos cincuenta por Diego Rivera”.
Luis-Martín Lozano
Art Historian