WASHINGTON, DC.- The Instituto de Mexico in Washington presents the exhibition Miguel Covarrubias – Genius of Mexico in the United States, on view through July 7. The exhibition is presented by the Cultural Institute of Mexico, Universidad de las Americas (Puebla), Humanities Texas, President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities & Smithsonian Latino Center.

Miguel Covarrubias was one of the artists who transformed the art of caricature drawing in the United States. The exhibition includes 52 sketches from the collection of Universidad de las Américas, 45 facsimiles from Miguel Covarrubias: Caricaturista, a Humanities Texas exhibit created in cooperation with the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, films and other audiovisual materials about Miguel Covarrubias. Special guests include María Elena Rico Covarrubias and Adriana Williams, author of Covarrubias (University of Texas Press, 1994) and Covarrubias in Bali (Editions Didier Millet, 2006 ).

Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957) is considered one of the foremost Mexican artists of the twentieth century. Yet the list of his accomplishments is not limited to the visual arts. A true Renaissance man, Covarrubias also made important contributions to the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology and to the creative fields of dance and theater. The breadth of his intellectual interests inspired him to explore cultures and ideas as varied as the brilliant hues of his art. A social critic, he drew caricatures that provide a window into the social, cultural, and political milieu of 1920s and 30s America. As an anthropologist, he documented a vanishing way of life on the Indonesian island of Bali. He was also an expert in indigenous Mexican art and culture, amassing with his wife Rosa a private collection of considerable historical breadth and artistic quality. Throughout his life, Covarrubias's learning and curiosity fed his artistic talent, and vice versa. The caricaturist Ralph Barton once observed, “To draw as Covarrubias draws, one has only to be born with a taste for understanding everything.”

In cooperation with the Harry Ransom Center of The University of Texas at Austin, Humanities Texas has developed Miguel Covarrubias: Caricaturista, a traveling exhibit of approximately forty facsimile works drawn from the range of genres in which Covarrubias worked. The exhibit will include facsimiles of watercolors, oil paintings, sketches, and photographs as well as advertisements and other images seldom reproduced for popular audiences. As the title suggests, the exhibition places special emphasis on Covarrubias's witty caricatures of the political leaders, artists, and celebrities of the first half of the twentieth century, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin, William Faulkner, Charlie Chaplin Will Rogers, Gloria Swanson, and Mae West.