In 1931, the young artist Ángel Bracho was working in Mexico with Diego Rivera, who introduced him to the German art dealer Galka Scheyer. Though of humble origins, Bracho eventually rose to become director and president of the Taller de Gráfica Popular, Mexico’s most influential printmaking collective. Here, in his lithograph Woman in Bed with a Cat, which was part of Scheyer’s collection, Bracho uses a flattened, cubist-like space for his surrealist, stream-of-consciousness images. The composition, featuring a masked odalisque and indigenous Mexican sculptures, has a dream-like quality. While depth is suggested by the ship in the background and the overlapping elements—such as the figure against the built structure and the cat positioned in front of the reclining nude—the overall effect is one of flattening of space. The arbitrary use of black outlines and the darkened areas between the objects and figures bring everything to the surface.
Details
- Artist Name: Angel Bracho (Mexican, 1911-2005)
- Title: Woman in Bed with a Cat
- Date: 1931
- Medium: Lithograph on laid paper
- Dimensions: 13-3/4 x 18-5/8 in. (34.9 x 47.3 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection
- Accession Number: P.1953.194
Object Information
Breaking Ground: 20th-Century Latin American Art at the Norton Simon Museum
- Norton Simon Museum, 2013-09-13 to 2013-11-04
Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California
- Norton Simon Museum, 2017-04-07 to 2017-09-25
From Europe to California: Galka Scheyer and the Avant-Garde
- Norton Simon Museum, 2003-05-16 to 2003-10-13
- The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection, Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, 1976, no. 339
- Barnett, Vivian Endicott, The Blue Four Collection at the Norton Simon Museum, 2002, no. 442 p. 437
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