Jul 16, 2020 - Sale 2541

Sale 2541 - Lot 58

Price Realized: $ 688
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(ANTONIO) ARIAS BERNAL.
"Ballet de los Murciélagos." ("Bat Ballet.") Probable cover for Noctámbulas magazine, circa 1945-47. Mixed media, including watercolor over graphite with glaze on board. 458x355 mm; 18x14 inches. Signed "Arias Bernal" in lower right image. Taped to window matte.
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Bernal is regarded as one of the most significant Mexican caricaturists and cartoonists of the twentieth century. Running from January 15, 1945 through 1947, Noctámbulas was the premier publication read by the fashionable pleasure-seekers of Mexico City's urban elite. Loosely translated as "Nightlifeing," the bi-weekly Spanish-language magazine was founded and edited by the journalist Carlos Denegri to guide the city's newly established leisure class through Mexico City's swanky nightclubs, restaurants, and theaters, whose glamor equaled those found in other cosmopolitan cities. The magazine included gossip columns, as well as sections dedicated to communicating the latest trends from Paris and New York. The covers created for Noctámbulas by Antonio Arias Bernal satirized and celebrated the dynamic nightlife of the capital city, which had gained an international reputation by the mid-1940s. (Dina Berger. "A Drink Between Friends." In Adventures Into Mexico: American Tourism Beyond the Border, edited by Nicholas Dagen Bloom, 25-27. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.)