Constructing the Indigenous Feminine Ideal: Alfredo Ramos Martínez

Join us for an evening lecture with Dr. Teresa Eckmann, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art History at the University of Texas San Antonio. This lecture traces Alfredo Ramos Martínez’s artistic trajectory and contribution to Malinche’s visual history.

Considered the “Father of Mexican Modernism,” Ramos Martínez propelled the artistic revolution in Mexico as the newly appointed director of painting at the Academia de San Carlos in 1910. Stylistically eclectic in his own work, he arrived at his mature style late in life as challenging family circumstances required him to relocate from his native Mexico to Southern California. There his art generated a buzz among the Hollywood elite. A committed proponent of indigenismo (Indigenism), Ramos Martínez fed Hollywood’s vision of a Mexican paradise as he fashioned, in his fresco murals and on canvas, the Indigenous feminine ideal, an enduring image of Deep Mexico. Embodying just such an image is Ramos Martinez’s La Malinche (1940) whose stoic, timeless visage graces the cover of the exhibition catalogue for Traitor, Icon, Survivor: The Legacy of La Malinche.