Miguel Covarrubias

The recorded working language is Spanish. Employment is recorded with National Autonomous University of Mexico. Work by Miguel Covarrubias is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship.

• Name — Miguel Covarrubias • Birth Name — José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud • Born — 22 November 1904 • Birthplace — Mexico City, Mexico • Died — 4 February 1957 • Place of death — Mexico City, Mexico • Known for — Painter, caricaturist, illustrator, ethnologist, art historian • Spouse — Rocío Sagaón (m. circa 1952) • Illustration — Covarrubias's caricature of himself as an Olmec

José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud was born on 22 November 1904 in Mexico City. After graduating from the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria at the age of 14, he started producing caricatures and illustrations for texts and training materials published by the Mexican Ministry of Public Education. He also worked for the Ministry of Communications. In 1923, at the age of 19, he moved to New York City armed with a grant from the Mexican government, tremendous talent, but very little English. In her book Covarrubias, author Adriana Williams writes that Mexican poet José Juan Tablada and New York Times critic/photographer Carl Van Vechten introduced him to New York's literary/cultural elite (known as the Smart Set). Soon Covarrubias was drawing for several top magazines, eventually becoming one of Vanity Fair magazine's premier caricaturists.

A man of many talents, he also began to design sets and costumes for the theater including Caroline Dudley Reagan's La Revue Negre starring Josephine Baker in the show that made her a smash in Paris. Other shows included Androcles and the Lion, The Four Over Thebes, and the Garrick Gaities' Rancho Mexicano number for dancer and choreographer Rosa Rolando (or Rolanda; born Rosemonde Cowan, and later to take the name Rosa Covarrubias). The two fell in love and traveled together to Mexico, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean in the mid to late 1920s. During one of their trips to Mexico, Rosa and Miguel travelled with Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, who taught Rosa photography. Rosa was also introduced to Miguel's family and friends including artist Diego Rivera. Rosa would become lifelong friends with Rivera's third wife, the artist Frida Kahlo.

Covarrubias was invited by the 1939-1940 Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) that was held on Treasure Island, "to create a mural set entitled Pageant of the Pacific to be the centerpiece of Pacific House, a center where the social, cultural and scientific interests of the countries in the Pacific Area could be shown to a large audience.'" Covarrubias painted the six murals for GGIE in San Francisco with his assistant Antonio M. Ruiz. The set of murals featured oversized, "illustrated maps entitled: The Fauna and Flora of the Pacific, Peoples, Art and Culture, Economy, Native Dwellings, and Native Means of Transportation. These murals were immensely popular at the GGIE and were later exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Upon returning to San Francisco, five of the murals were installed at the World Trade Club in the Ferry Building where they hung until 2001. The whereabouts of the sixth mural, Art and Culture, is unknown and has been the subject of great speculation." The Fauna and Flora of the Pacific mural is on display at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. "The colorful map depicts the four Pacific Rim continents with examples of their flora and fauna suspended in a swirling Pacific Ocean populated with sea creatures."

Miguel and Rosa married in 1930 and they took an extended honeymoon to Bali with the National Art Directors' Medal prize money where they immersed themselves in the local culture, language, and customs. Miguel returned to Southeast Asia (Java, Bali, India, Vietnam) in 1933, as a Guggenheim Fellow with Rosa whose photography would become part of Miguel's book, Island of Bali. The book and particularly the marketing for months surrounding its release, contributed to the 1930s Bali craze in New York. He also spent time in China, where his work was very influential among artists in Shanghai. • Illustration — Rosa Rolanda with writer Avery Hopwood, 1924. Rosa and Miguel returned to live in Mexico City where he continued to paint, illustrate, and write. Their home, Tizapán, would become a hub for visitors from around the world including the likes of Nickolas Muray, Dolores del Río, and Nelson Rockefeller. He taught ethnology at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia and was appointed artistic director and director of administration for a new department at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the National Palace of Fine Arts. His mandate was to add an Academy of Dance - a task to which Rosa with her dance and choreography background was most valuable. Miguel recruited friend and dancer José Limón who brought his dance company from New York City for the inaugural season in 1950, taught at Bellas Artes, and helped arrange for international exposure of this new Mexican modern dance company. During Miguel's tenure, traditional Mexican dance was not only researched, documented, and preserved but this research into its roots, helped usher in a new era in contemporary Mexican dance. In 1952, Covarrubias had completely separated from Rolanda in pursuit of one of his students, Rocío Sagaón. Edward Sorel noted that "as [Covarrubias] and Rosa had not been married by a priest (...) he chose to ignore their legal marriage" and married Sagaón in a Catholic ceremony.

His recorded language was Spanish. He married Rosa Rolanda.