Arcadópolis
Woman with a Pumpkin
Saturnino Herrán, 1917
What you see
A young woman sits in three-quarter view, smiling and looking straight at us. Her hair is parted in the middle, with a long braid tied in red ribbon, and she wears a pale blouse embroidered with dark flowers. In her arms she holds half a pumpkin, cut open. Behind her grow prickly pear cacti with their fruit, and far off on the right stand white houses beneath a cloud.
The drawing shows everywhere, in loose lines that look like pastel or charcoal across the blouse and skirt. The orange inside of the pumpkin, the red ribbon and the purple fruit supply the accents of color. Look for her small earring and the signature at lower right.
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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