MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS

Mexican painter, caricaturist, and ethnologist Miguel Covarrubias is particularly well known for his works inspired by the island of Bali. Covarrubias first encountered Bali during his honeymoon in 1930 and returned to Southeast Asian in 1933 as a Guggenheim Fellow. He produced an acclaimed group of works based on the subject of Bather Holding Up Her Yellow Kemban in various mediums: oil on canvas, gouache on masonite (Christie's New York, May 2012), watercolor on paper, and pencil on paper (this present lot). The girl holding up her kemban - a length of cloth used by aristocratic Javanese women to wrap the torso - as she crouches in the nude has become one of Covarrubias's most iconic subjects.