Producer unknown to us
Sculpture La Catrina
Americas, Mexico, Michoacán, Capula
2001
Ceramic, fired, glazed in colour
Purchased by the museum from GLOBO Fair Trade Partner GmbH in 2002
MAm 8034 a, b
The skeletal representation of death that is now a staple of Mexican popular culture dates back to a 1912 metal engraving by artist José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913). ”La Calavera Garbancera” was made at a time when artists like Posada were using their artwork to express their criticism of the social conditions, the prevailing social injustice, and the widespread (internalized) racism of the time of the authoritarian regime known as the Porfiriato (1876–1911). In the years that followed, during the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917), the skeleton was depicted wearing a large French bourgeois slouch hat, in the style of the bourgeois women, in order to mock the Mexican upper class's striving for European aesthetics. The name ”La Catrina” was coined by the muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957) in one of his artworks in 1947, derived from the term ”catrín,” which was used to describe rich and genteel dandies. Rivera's ”Catrina,” however, in addition to her bourgeois skirt and hat, also wears a feathered serpent boa around her neck, representing the Mesoamerican goddess Quetzalcoátl who is worshiped for the creation of humans. Today, feminist collectives use the skull as a symbol to commemorate the murdered and missing women* in Mexico on the ”Day of the Dead” and to demonstrate for the solution of violent crimes and against gender-specific violence.
The sculpture was purchased by the museum in 2002 through the retailer Fair Trade Partner GmbH.
Julia von Sigsfeld