Jun 13, 2017 - Sale 2451
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Sale 2451 - Lot 122

Price Realized: $ 4,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
(MEXICO.) OLIN, NAHUI [Pseud. of Carmen Mondragón.] Optica Cerebral: Poemas Dinámicos. Color stencils on cover, title-page, author's name page (half-title), and Contents leaf, by Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo). [6], 122, [4] pages. 4to, original illustrated wrappers, three half-inch chips to top and corners of front cover, a few other minor chips and creases along edges; front endpaper (with inscription) somewhat toned. [Mexico]: Ediciones Mexico Moderno, [1922]
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Additional Details

a copy of the exceedingly scarce first edition, inscribed and signed by the mexican surrealist nahui olin to publisher, writer, and politician, José Martinez Sotomayor, dated Mexico, June 25, 1922, soon after the book's publication.

Olin was the muse of artists such as Diego Rivera, Edward Weston, and Tina Modotti, and became a surrealist poet and artist in her own right, as well as a figure of eroticism and mysticism with her eccentric behavior. She began a public and somewhat scandalous affair in 1921 with the painter Gerardo Murillo, who used the pseudonym Dr. Atl, the Aztec Nahuatl word for water. He christened Carmen as Nahui Olin, also of Aztec origin, having to do with renewal, the sun's force behind the cyclic rhythm of the heavens, and the symbol of earthquakes. Olin's intense green eyes were often depicted in his paintings of her (as well as in Rivera's murals) and the cover of this, their first collaborative work, displays them prominently in her forceful gaze; an abstract elongation of their whites shooting off the sides of the page hints at the forcible contents within. The Aztec-style illustrations on the title-page and vignette reflect the sun and earth symbolism of her name.

Sotomayor was a lawyer, judge, and writer who published and contributed to contemporary Mexican journals such as Bandera de Provincias, and Contemporáneos, along with José Gorostiza, Jaime Torres Bodet and Xavier Villaurrutia, often under the pseudonym Till Ealling. He was named Federal Attorney General and was appointed to the Mexican Academy of Language.