This peculiar and beautiful sculpture corresponds to the peak of the culture that developed in the Valley of Acambaro, situated in the southeast of Guanajuato. Its name is that of the town of Chupicuaro, in the municipality of Jerecuaro, whose original settlement was flooded by the Solis dam in 1949; previously, Daniel Rubin de la Borbolla, Elsa Estrada Balmori and Muriel Noah Porter performed the archaeological recovery work, which uncovered notions of the original contexts of underground and surface level burial sites with a remarkable ceramic production that already then was found in vast quantities in domestic and foreign collections.
Using clay as their raw material, the artists of Chupicuaro created sculptures and vessels in which they discerned stylistic variations associated with determined phases of the development of the culture. Among the highlights of the sculpted images, two solid figures and one hollow figure of a larger size stand out. What we see belongs to the latter category, which shares its stylistic features with ceramic vessels of the type known as black polychrome. The female was the preferred theme of sculptors.
Being hollow in volume this allowed, in technical , its increased height of almost a half meter; during firing a solid figure of this size would shatter, and to avoid this effect it has several "firing" orifices in the full figurative sense: the half-open mouth, the navel and one in the anal area. The modeling and decoration are evidence of a creative master ceramicist and painter; the bulkiness of the abdomen suggests pregnancy; the hands placed on the abdomen are a cultural gesture that also implies pregnancy.
According to the conventions of the style, the shoulders are tall and defined, the breasts are very separated, barely revealed, and the hip and the back part of the thighs are subtly pronounced. It is possible that it had been designed to be reclining as it is not able to remain standing: the feet are short and the volumes are not in balance. The tall and rectangular head shows an accentuated tabular oblique deformation as it is leaning back; the vertical division may indicate a hairstyle.
As well as the head, the crafted image that emphasizes the artistic recreation of the human body stands out; it infers body paint and perhaps clothing; the hollow Chupicuaro sculptures are characterized by the brilliant red surfaces and geometric designs painted in black and red over cream. In this one the basic motif that decorates the face and the body is a staggered diamond pattern. Underwear was perhaps formed in the pelvic area; this feature also appears in other feminine figures from Western cultures, nevertheless, frequently the genitals are delineated as though they were exposed; in the piece at hand there is a sunken outline.
The face evokes the use of a mask, in fact, under the rectangular cut of the mouth, an oval shaped opening is visible. Although the greatest visual interest is on the front of the image, on the side we note the lengthened and oblique form of the head, the agile profile, and the depression of the chin--which reminds us of the little H4 or "almond eyes"--style small solid sculptures, the bulkiness of the buttocks, and in the back of the head a mysterious trapezoidal shape painted gray. As well as embellishing the body, we can also infer that the decorations had symbolic values, which today we are not able to understand.
This peculiar and beautiful sculpture corresponds to the peak of the culture that developed in the Valley of Acambaro, situated in the southeast of Guanajuato. Its name is that of the town of Chupicuaro, in the municipality of Jerecuaro, whose original settlement was flooded by the Solis dam in 1949; previously, Daniel Rubin de la Borbolla, Elsa Estrada Balmori and Muriel Noah Porter performed the archaeological recovery work, which uncovered notions of the original contexts of underground and surface level burial sites with a remarkable ceramic production that already then was found in vast quantities in domestic and foreign collections.
