Female Figure with Geometric Face and Body Paint

Description

This sculpture belongs to the sophisticated Chupícuaro artistic tradition, which was more concerned with symbolic abstraction than naturalistic anatomical proportion. The female figure stands in a formal frontal pose, the oversize head set with staring, lozenge-shaped eyes, the nose jutting forward above a receding chin, and the open mouth showing rows of teeth. Subtly concave in the middle, the trapezoidal torso abruptly swells in the bulbous hips, belly, and thighs. The face and body are covered by burnished, deep red slip, or liquid clay, which sets off a bold pattern of cream zigzag lines; more delicate designs were drawn across the cream-painted loins and thighs. There is an uncanny visual quality to the hieratic stance, stylized proportions, and brilliant designs, all of which reflect the ritual body paint that Chupícuaro women would have worn on high ceremonial occasions some two thousand years ago.

It is possible that this and several known related figures commemorated a girl's coming of age, embodying a perceived correspondence between the stages of human life and the earth's annual cycle of birth, death, and renewal. As burial offerings, these effigies would have affirmed the matriarchal status of a high-ranking, mature, and productive member of society, recalling her initiation into womanhood and family life, and her active participation in seasonal rites devoted to securing the fertility of the soil, the abundance of crops, and the well being of the community from year to year.

Provenance

Guy Joussemet (died Oct. 12, 2019), Montreal and Paris, from 1964 [purchased in Mexico in 1964 according to signed statement from G. Joussemet, Sept. 30, 1997, provided by Galerie Mermoz; copy in curatorial object file]; sold to Galerie Mermoz, Paris, 1997 [according to correspondence from Galerie Mermoz, Apr. 1, 2022; copy in curatorial object file; invoice no. 2007/635, Oct. 1, 2007; shipping documentation from France, July 11, 2007, in curatorial object file]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2007.

Female Figure with Geometric Face and Body Paint

Chupícuaro

200–100 BCE

Accession Number

191750

Medium

Terracotta and pigmented slip

Dimensions

44.8 × 20 × 8.7 cm (17 5/8 × 7 7/8 × 3 7/16 in.)

Classification

sculpture

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Frederick W. Renshaw Acquisition Fund; purchased with funds provided by Cynthia and Terry E. Perucca, Jamee and Marshall Field, and Helen and Sam Zell; Edward Johnson, Grant J. Pick Purchase, and Henry Horner Straus Memorial funds; purchased with funds provided by Lynn and Allen Turner; African and Amerindian Curator’s Discretionary Fund