Against a dark blue ground, a man bends forward, holding the pale, reclining body of a woman in his arms

The Legend of the Volcanoes

Saturnino Herrán, 1910

What you see

Two nude figures appear against a dark blue ground, with no landscape or floor. A dark-skinned man, bent forward with his head lowered, holds close a pale-skinned woman who reclines in his arms, her head tipped back and one arm hanging loose. Her bent legs trace a curve across the left half of the picture.

The contrast between the man's warm tone and the woman's pale skin structures the whole composition. Outlines melt into the background in a bluish haze, and the brushwork lets the texture of the surface show through. The man's face is nearly lost in shadow, so the eye goes to the gesture of holding her.

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