Painted soon after Mexican-born, American artist Emilio Amero left Seattle for a professorship in Oklahoma, this head distills his fusion of Mexican modernism and the Pacific Northwest’s search for distilled form. Amero, trained in Mexico City and once an assistant to Diego Rivera, often drew on ancient Mesoamerican sculpture with mask-like planes and heavy eyelids which echo that lineage while avoiding caricature.
In this tempera on panel painting, the artist depicts a young woman’s copper-rose face modeled in smooth planes and her wide, almond eyes unfocused beneath a rolled, turban-like yellow headscarf. She lifts her right hand toward her cheek, fingers bent as if testing the surface of her skin. Light from the left warms the brow and nose bridge, while the ear and jaw sink into shadow. A deep red with pale mortar lines brick wall is behind her head with a pale band of sky resting above it. Her sturdy-to-the-neck shirt is mustard yellow. The simplified features, polished textures, and compressed space make the figure feel monumental, intimate, and contemplative all at once.
In Seattle (1941–1943), Amero taught at the University of Washington and the Cornish School, shaping a circle of modernists; by 1946 he was building a renowned print workshop at the University of Oklahoma. Here, the quiet gesture and brick backdrop suggest urban interiority rather than muralist spectacle, show Amero’s range beyond lithography and fresco into psychologically charged portraiture.
"Head of a Woman" aka "The Gesture" by Emilio Amero (Mexican-American) – Tempera on panel / 1947 – Seattle Art Museum (Washington) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #EmilioAmero #Amero #SeattleArtMuseum #arte #pintura #MexicanModernism #PacificNorthwestModernism #Tempera #Modernism #ModernArt
