September is National Sewing Month and as a sewist myself, and a Latinx/Latin American art enthusiast, I had to share some of my favorite Latin American art works that feature the sewing machine!
Fernando Botero, Taller de costureras, 2000
In early 2023, The New York Times asked Fernando Botero to select a work of his that best exemplified his career. He selected Taller de costura (Sewing Workshop), 2000.
Botero said, “This painting has autobiographical elements, because it represents a sewing workshop with three assistants, like the one my mother had, who had been widowed at a very young age. The central theme of my work is the Latin America that I experienced when I was young, and that is why images of my life in Colombia often appear in my oil paintings and drawings.”
He also felt that Taller de costura, was a prime example of, what he called “boterismo”, his signature artistic style that included striking colors and voluminous proportions.
“This work”, he said, “like all the others, is a declaration of principles. In other words, it is a kind of manifesto about how, in my opinion, painting should be. I think that painting embodies the synthesis of color, composition, form and drawing, and all of that is revealed and expressed in style.”
Antonio Martorell, La Playa Negra, 2010
This artwork, which resembles a vintage stamp, goes back to the artist’s childhood memories when he received photographs of Puerto Rican migrants who came to New York. The black-and-white photographs showed off their winter garments and smiling faces making him believe they were very successful. Many years later when Martorell came to New York, he learned the truth, they weren’t as successful as they claimed. In this work, Martorell describes this duality by depicting a lady posing in a luxurious looking fur coat beside a woman operating a factory sewing machine. The fancy lady is the same lady that worked 10 hours a day, six days a week in a sewing sweatshop in NYC.
By the mid-century, 25% of the garment workers in New York were Puerto Rican women, and they were a huge part of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which is a labor union.
Yolanda Lopez , Margaret F. Stewart: Our Lady of Guadalupe, 1978
Chicana artist Yolanda López achieved international recognition for her groundbreaking and controversial Virgin of Guadalupe series of paintings (1975–78) in which she transformed the beloved icon in order to celebrate and sanctify ordinary Mexican and Mexican American women as hardworking, assertive, and vibrant.
Born in San Diego, California, López formally trained as a painter but expanded into a variety of media, including installation, video, and slide presentations.
In this artwork titled, Margaret F. Stewart: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Lopez’s mother, standing in for the virgin, is transported to the heavens. She is an autonomous, working-class woman depicted sitting hunched over a sewing machine, stitching the the gold stars on her own robe. She looks straight ahead (not downward as the virgin often looks), guided by something otherworldly. This assignment is divine, sewing is holy work.
FYI: The little figure on the bottom could be Juan Diego, the Indigenous man whom the Virgen appeared to in 1531
Diego Rivera, The Family at Work Together, 1923-28
This work, , featuring a sewing machine in the corner, goes by different names. Its more official title is probably, “End of Corrido of the Proletarian Revolution, Court of the Fiestas, third floor, mural in the Secretaría de Educación Pública, Mexico City.” As you can see from this title, it is part of a larger mural project by Diego Rivera in the Ministry of Education building in Mexico City.
After the ten-year revolutionary conflict (1910–1920, which ousted the dictator Porfirio Díaz), the Mexican state sponsored the creation of a mural movement in an effort to express and consolidate a Mexican national culture. The murals were painted from 1923–1928, primarily by Diego Rivera and addressed thematic issues of nation-building, indigenísmo, modernization, and socialist politics
This scene (with the sewing machine) is the last to appear on the third floor of the building, all the way to the left (look to the very right of the image below, you’ll see a a portion of it).
In this portion of the mural, there seems to be a focus on art and family. A woman is depicted sewing in the corner while children, maybe hers, are reading and writing nearby. There is another woman standing up, a book in her hand, tending to a younger child. The two women, working together, show the interdependence needed in raising children. Above the woman sewing is a man, fully armed, and two more men, depicted smaller, indicating that they are farther away, working in the field.
In this art , Diego Rivera points to education, art, revolution, and men and women, working together, as the recipe for the rebuilding of Mexico.
Agustin Lazo, La costurera, c. 1942-45 and Mujer en paisaje, 1935
Mexican artist Agustin Lazo painted two seamstresses so I couldn’t pick just one!
Unlike the Mexican muralists who were interested in nation building, Agustin Lazo’s paintings are personal and intimate. The lyrical vein of his themes link him with the aesthetics of surrealism that he encountered directly during his stay in Europe.
Born in Mexico City in 1896, Agustin Lazo was a painter, designer and playwright. He was also considered the pioneer of surrealism in Mexican art by several art historians. Surrealism is a style in art and literature in which ideas, images, and objects are combined in a strange way, like in a dream.
Both works have this dream-like quality. La costurera (The Seamstress) is a little-known painting in the history of Mexican art. In this one, the seamstress is indoors and blends in with the background, she and her work are one, her identity wrapped up in her craft. The cocoon like composition and wispiness of the brushstrokes place her in an ethereal, almost poetic setting.
The same is true of the second one, where the overall short brushstrokes throughout, make the seamstress appear one with the background, part of the landscape. She is sewing in nature.
In both works there is a limited palette and the sewists are transported to another world where time and space are irrelevant. I can attest! This is what happens when you love to sew!
Which is your favorite? I would love to know!