Girl from San Luis Potosí, attributed to Horacio Renteria Rocha Durango (1912 -1972)

Girl from San Luis Potosí between Precolumbian figures

51,5 x 37 cm / 28,3 x 14,6 in
Verso with traces of older labels
In a fluted frame

The depiction of a girl sitting on an orange-coloured wooden chair, holding a modern, bulging bowl in her lap over a green checked skirt, looks like an ancestral image. Her legs, standing in red shoes, are surrounded by fine translucent lace and flanked by a Precolumbian figure and a black clay vessel in the shape of a bird. Her braids are carefully tied upwards with a red ribbon. Above her is a rotulus carried by birds with the inscription: "Se retrató la niña Maria 5 de junio del 1965 y la dedico a sus Padres / San Luis Potosi (...)". The present painting is a major motif in Horacio's oeuvre, as children at play or in their domestic environment, sometimes with cult and household objects, were his favourite motifs, through which a native soul was transferred to the canvas.

Even as a child, Horacio painted on house facades using brick dust, lime and pieces of burnt coal, as the conditions into which he was born in Victoria de Durango in Mexico were poor. However, he managed to successfully complete his maths degree and soon began working as a French and Spanish teacher. During his time as a teacher, he began to take up and deepen the artistic endeavours he had tried out as a child. He was a pupil of the painter William des Lourdes and produced marvellous murals. After the death of his wife, he turned his back on teaching and devoted himself entirely to painting. In 1940, he was awarded a scholarship at the San Carlos Art Academy and later went to Mexico City. This was followed by stays in Guerro and in beautiful San Luis Potosi. His works soon became famous abroad too and Mia Farrow, for example, ponders over a reproduction of Horacio in Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby". His paintings were particularly popular in the Paris art scene of the 1950s and 1960s and were sometimes even exhibited in the Louvre and the Prado.

Provenance:
Parisian private collection