Arcadópolis
Nudity. This work is shown blurred, as in the Museum.Show work
Our Ancient Gods
Saturnino Herrán, 1916
What you see
A group of standing men crowd together in front of large round shields. They wear loincloths, feather headdresses and gold ear ornaments. On the left, one holds a horizontal rod; behind him, a hand lifts a bowl trailing smoke. At the center, the palest figure tilts his head and looks down, and that is where the eye comes to rest.
Herrán works with a restrained palette of ochres, browns and grays, with touches of red in the feathers and black on the shields. The figures are elongated and firmly outlined against a flat, almost depthless background. Notice the vessel filled with something white held by the man on the right, and the framed signature at lower left.
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.
More by Saturnino Herrán
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