Old Woman

Saturnino Herrán, 1917

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What you see

A white-haired old woman fills most of the canvas, her head bent toward her hands. She wears a black shawl over a pale blouse with a dark bow at the neck. One hand lifts a strand of thread while the other holds a slender needle, from which a ball of yarn dangles. On the right, a church with a tower and dome stands against the sky.

Almost everything is dark: blacks, greens and grays that make her softly lit face and hands stand out. The only bright color is the orange of the ball of yarn at lower right. Look at the wrinkled skin of her hands and the white cuff of her blouse peeking out from under the shawl.

About Saturnino Herrán

Saturnino Herrán was born in Aguascalientes in 1887 and trained at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, studying drawing with the Catalan painter Antonio Fabrés and colour with Germán Gedovius. He turned scenes of everyday Mexican life into symbolic images of identity, and his painting “The Offering” (1913) is a classic example of Mexican modernism. He died in 1918, aged only 31, while working on “Our Gods”, a triptych commissioned for the Palace of Fine Arts, and his work became a model for the muralists of the following decades.

All 12 works by Saturnino Herrán