The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 29, 2024

Geometrically Patterned Female Figure

Geometrically Patterned Female Figure

400–100 BCE
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

This figure was formed in two halves that were hollowed out and joined at the hips.

Description

Artists of the Chupícuaro culture, based to the north of modern-day Mexico City, may be best known for hollow ceramic figurines like this one. Always female and often apparently pregnant, such figurines commonly are painted with stepped geometric motifs in vibrant, highly burnished slips (creamy mixtures of water and crushed minerals). The meanings of the motifs and the figurines themselves are poorly understood.
  • ?-1967
    May Company, Cleveland, OH, September 1967, sold to James C. and Florence C, Gruener
    1967-1990
    James C. [1903-1990] and Florence C. [1908-1982] Gruener, Cleveland, OH, bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    1990-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art
  • Young-Sánchez, Margaret. "The Gruener Collection of Pre-Columbian Art." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 79, no. 7 (1992): 234-75. Referenced: cat. no. 23, p. 268, Reproduced: fig. 23, p. 243 www.jstor.org
  • Stories From Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).
    The Gruener Collection of Pre-Columbian Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 4-November 29, 1992).
  • {{cite web|title=Geometrically Patterned Female Figure|url=false|author=|year=400–100 BCE|access-date=29 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1990.155