Indian Woman from Oaxaca

In 1928, Ramón Cano Manilla vvas the director of the Open Air Painting School in the Coyoacan district of Mexico City, having himself been trained in the same network of schools under Alfredo Ramos Martínez. Iridian Woman from Oaxaca exemplifies the aims of the said art-education centers, which consisted in the study of the natural environment and the visual depiction of what were becoming "typically Mexican" characters. Against a backdrop of jungle, a dark-faced native woman, immobile and head-on, is wearing a typical costume from the Oaxaca highlands, embroidered with stylized geometrical flower and bird motifs. These painstakingly executed symmetrical features are typical of the handicrafts that were deemed emblematic of the Mexican nation at that time and, indeed, in 1928, this piece won a prize at the Spanish- American Exhibition in Seville. Cano Manilla was inspired by Henri Rousseau's depictions of figures amid lush, exotic scenes and, hence, the woman in this painting -which is an example of the post-revolutionary emphasis on the indigenous aspect of Mexican identity— forms part and parcel of a luxuriant landscape waiting to be tamed. This work was assigned to the MUNAL by the National Fine Arts Institutes National Center for the Conservation and Registration of Mexico’s Artistic Heritage, as part of the museum's founding endowment, in 1982.