Signed and dated 'Nahum b. Zenil 85' (upper right)
Provenance: Galería de Arte Mexicano, Mexico City.
James Sartin collection, Cuernavaca.
Colección Bonampak
Literature: Exhibition catalogue, Del istmo y sus mujeres: tehuanas en el arte mexicano, Mexico City, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1992, p. 176, no. 78 (illustrated in color).
Exhibited:
Adelaide, Australia, Adelaide Festival Centre, Mexico, Out of The Profane: Six Contemporary Mexican Artists, 1 March-1 April 1990. This exhibition also travelled to Perth, Art Gallery of Western Australia, 1 May-24 June 1990, Wellington, New Zealand, National Art Gallery, 14 July-19 August, 1990.
Monterrey, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Nahum Zenil, 1991.
Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Arte, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Del istmo y sus mujeres: tehuanas en el arte mexicano, 1 August-31 October 1992. This exhibition also travelled to Chicago, The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, 1992-93.
Virgilio Garza, Head of Department: Nahum B. Zenil is an essential artist in the history of Mexican art that deserves a closer look. The extraordinary body of work that Zenil created in the ‘80s and ‘90s is a frank exploration of his cultural and sexual identity. A master draftsman, his quasi-surreal self-portraits quickly positioned him as a postmodern heir to Frida Kahlo and his work opened new frontiers for contemporary Mexican art of the 80s, along with Julio Galán, Rocío Maldonado and Germán Venegas, to name a few artists of his generation associated with ‘Neomexicanismo’. Highly biographical, his works touch upon themes of growing up as a homosexual in rural Mexico, his life in the big city with his lover Gerardo and his ailing mother, his Catholic upbringing and his role as an outsider in Mexican society. Señora y peces, one of a few of his masterworks that depart from the self-portrait, depicts a miraculous apparition of fertility and abundance.
