Mexican landscape. Circa 1955.

Gelatin silver print -measures: 24.9 x 20.2 cm / 9.8 x 7.95 in-, with the author's stamp (PHOTOGRAPH / URSULA BERNATH) on the back. Work in very good condition. 

The United Mexican States - as well as other Latin American countries - were favored by the special immigration of talented photographers from Central Europe since before World War II. Forming part of that select group was the German Úrsula Bernath; she arrived in 1946 being a widow with three children, and, very soon, joined the national photographic trend thanks to her mentor, the Czech filmmaker Viktor Albrecht Blum, who connected her to relevant cultural figures such as the muralist Diego Rivera, the Swiss Gertrude Duby Blom and Tina Modotti herself, thus becoming interested in the documentation of the indigenous world, of which her sensitive registers made her an inescapable reference.

However, this image explains, landscaping was no stranger to her artistic interests. The location of the camera gives us a harmonious dialogue between the gentle hills and the farm fields, with the background of the famous Iztaccíhuatl (white woman in Nahuatl) volcano, the third highest in Mexico. This excellent work shows us the artist's fine perception of light in relation to the Mexican natural and cultural landscape. Her records on popular festivals, pre-Hispanic archaeological sites and rites and customs of the different communities are of a striking quality and, several of these images, were uploaded in her books "Mexico: The land, art and people" and "You are my brother".

Like many Mexican artists of the mid-20th century of the stature of Juan Rulfo, Mariana Yampolsky or Graciela Iturbide, the German Bernath (1915-2014) captured the fascinating indigenous world and did so with the artisan spirit of the Bauhaus School.

DLM