JEANIII

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CHARLOTCharlot'snameandearlyworkareconsistentlygroupedwiththoseof thefamousMexicanmuralistsof the 1920sand1930s. Thegroup,knownasLos Tres Grandes, consistedof DiegoRivera,JoseClementeOrozco,andDavidAlfaroSiqueiros.JeanCharlotis alsoknownasa successfuleaselpainterand illustrator.

By Glenda L. Carne

In the first half of the twentieth

century, Colorado Springs had the

good fortune of attracting a stringof great artists and educators. Suc-ceeding the well-known BoardmanRobinson as Director of both the

Fountain Valley School Art Depart-ment and the Colorado Springs FineArts Center Arts School was Jean

Charlot, perhaps one of the most in-ternationally significant visual artistswho have made their homes in Colo-

rado Springs.Charlot's multi-dimensional expe-

riences as an artist and educator are

traced to early in his life. He began

painting at a very young age in hisnative France.

Louis Henri Jean Charlot was bornin Paris in 1898 of a Russian father anda Mexican mother. He identified him-

self, culturally, as French, yet he hadthe unique ability to connect himselfand his art with many other cultures.

Charlot's early years seem to set

the pattern for his interesting, diverselife and artistic experiences. As a teen-age artist and athlete, he began paint-ing small landscapes of oil on paper

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while also becoming the French Na-tional Scholastic Boxing Champion inthe medium weight division.

As a young man, Charlot wasdrafted as an Artillery Lieutenant intothe Senegalese Troops.

After completing his military ser-vice, he became fascinated by muralsand frescos. In search of a place to

paint on walls, in 1921 he traveled toMexico.

In Mexico, Charlot experienced the

Open Air Arts School of the Academyof San Carlos in Coyocan, a suburb ofMexico City. For two years he wasan assistant to Diego Rivera, and dur-ing this time he completed his mural,The Massacre in the Main Temple, the

first work of the twentieth century

mural movement completed in truefresco.

The Massacre is Charlot's concep-

tion of the conquest of Mexico. His

interpretation is bold, diagonal and

dynamic, emphasizing the violence

that occurred when the Aztec Empire

was lost. The brutality of the conquestis vivid as Charlot uses artistic tech-

niques to portray death and intimi-

dation. The inscription at the base ofthe mural contains commentary onthe historical event. The mural is lo-

cated in the west court stairway of theNational Preparatory School inMexico City. Created in 1922 and1923, it is 14' x 26'. Charlot also

painted other panels related to thefresco at the Preparatoria.

At the Secretaria de Educad6n,

also in Mexico City, Charlot com-pleted three murals in the fresco formin the second court, first floor. The

two intact frescos are titled Cargadores(Burden Bearers), and Lavanderas(Washing Women). In LavanderasCharlot has succeeded in capturingthe colorful, active daily event of vil-lage women. Each of these murals isapproximately 16' x 7 Wand wascompleted during the summermonths of 1923. The third mural,

DanzadelosListones(Danceof the Rib-bons) was destroyed in 1924.

Through his personal experiencesand observations of the activities of

Los Tres Grandes, Charlot became thecommentator on and recorder of themuralist movement in Mexico.

While still in Mexico, Charlot

painted small oils (10" x 14") of Mexi-can subjects. Many of his paintingsof this period are of a Mexican-Indianwoman, Luciana (Luz) Jimenez, hisfriend and favorite model. Charlot's

renditions of Luz are characterized byroundness, fullness and a heavyearthiness characteristic of some of

the indigenous residents of Mexico.He considered Luz a prototype of thenude female figure. She representedthe mother-goddess, fertility, andabundance.

In addition to socializing with lo-cals, Charlot also met famous peopleand diversified his experiences dur-ing his time in Mexico. Charlot's as-sociates there included photographerEdward Weston, writer Anita

Brenner, and important Latin artistssuch as Frida Kahlo and her husband

Diego Rivera. Charlot's drawingswere partially influenced by EdwardWeston's photographic style.

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Between 1924 and 1926, Charlot

was the Editor of Mexican FolkwaysMagazine, and in 1926, received theassignment of staff artist to theCarnegie Institution's Chichen Itzaarchaeological site excavation. Dur-ing the two years he worked with theCarnegie group, he copied Maya re-liefs found as the buildings were ex-cavated. Themes from the

eight-hundred-year-old Maya frescosare continually incorporated intoCharlot's work of the early nineteenthcentury.

Through projects such as theCarnegie excavation, Charlot gaineda unique mastery of Maya and Azteccultures; he became extremely suc-cessful in synthesizing Mexican-In-dian and Christian cultural sources.

Charlot's success in incorporatingthese Mexican-Indian and Christianideas is evident in his illustrative

work in "Our Lady of Guadalupe," a1955 children's book.

The story of Our Lady ofGuadalupe involves an encounter be-tween an Indian man and the Catho-

lic Virgin Mary. The use of dark skintones and rich, earthy colors combineswith chiseled, block-like shapes tosuccessfully illustrate the story of themiraculous appearance of the Virginto a Mexican Indian. Charlot has a

strong personal interest in the miracleof the Virgin of Guadalupe. He stud-ied many accounts of it in both Span-ish and the native Nahuatl language.He continued to illustrate some 52

books throughout his lifetime.Of the children's books Charlot il-

lustrated, two have won the NewberyMedal and two have been runners-upfor the Caldecott Medal. Charlot was

chosen as one of the half-century's tenbest children's illustrators by the NewYork Times at a time when he had com-

pleted only ten of his illustrationprojects. Author Peter Morse consid-ers "Our Lady of Guadalupe" to beCharlot's masterpiece of children'sbook illustration.

Throughout Charlot's artistic ca-reer, his work and life were inspired

./PRING 1999

Above: Jean Charlot checking proofs of Mexican Mother, the ~948 lithograph

offered by the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center as a membership premium

that year. This lithograph is also featured on the cover of this issue of KIVA.

and stabilized by his religious beliefs.His religion-inspired work was in-tended to connect its viewers withGod. He believed art could serve as

a teaching tool for the poor and illit-erate. His other interests and influ-

ences included scholarship andresearch into Mesoamerican culture,the creation and criticism of art, and

creative writing, all of which allowedCharlot to reconcile his personal ex-periences and religious beliefs. In ad-dition to his faith, his other sourcesof inspiration were traditional art his-tory and literature, Medieval andearly Renaissance France, poetry, andthe folk songs of Brittany.

Charlot was undoubtedly influ-enced by the colorful illustrations ofthe Aztec codices, folk wood blocks,and the folk art he experienced inMexico and throughout his life. Thebasic characteristics of his work in-

clude dramatic diagonals, geometriccomposition, and geometric designs,all of which are clearly visible in his1948 painting, LosMalinches in the col-lection of The Colorado Springs FineArts Center.

Los Malinches (The Malinches, afolk dance depicting Spanish and In-dian contact), is an active compositionof costumed figures in the Mexicanmural style. Figures in the paintingare performing Los Matachines, apopular folk dance representing amock battle. The cubist-style paint-ing is a creation of geometric shapescombined with intense and colorful

hues. The painting uses little perspec-tive, yet it manages to achieve extremedepth and movement.

In the late 1920s, Charlot relocated

to New York where he taught at theArts Students League and met his fu-ture wife, Zohmah Day. Charlot'swork of the early 1930's developed ina new direction. The influence of cub-ism asserted itself and the number of

his portrayals of nudes becamesmaller. In 1933, he produced, in alimited edition of 500, Picture Book,

with Lynton R. Kistler, a noted litho-grapher.

During his time in the East, Charlotcompleted illustrations for Harper'sMagazine. In 1940 he received dualFrench and U.S. citizenship, and in

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Below: Massacre at the Main Temple - Massacre en

el Templo Mayor, Escuela Preparatoria, Mexico,

D.F. stairway, West Court, 1922-23.

Bottom: Detail of Massacre at the Main Temple -

Massacre en el Templo Mayor.

Photo by EgmontContreras

1941 became an artist-in-residence at

the University of Georgia. In Athens,Georgia, Charlot began giving infor-mal art instruction and had the op-portunity to be involved in localmural projects. These murals have re-cently undergone repair and restora-tion.

In 1942, Charlot was an instructor

of art history at the University of Cali-fornia at Berkeley. In California, hehad several exhibits and did periodi-cal and book illustrations and color

lithographs.In 1944 he was artist-in-residence

at Smith College in Massachusetts,and in 1945 he returned to Mexico on

a Guggenheim Research Fellowship.In 1947, Charlot moved to Colo-

rado Springs to begin his tenures asDirector of the School of Art (theBroadmoor Art Academy) at theColorado Springs Fine Arts Centerand as Director of the Art Program atthe Fountain Valley School (for Boys).

At the Fountain Valley School,

20 KIVA

Charlot completed several projectscurrently in the school's collection.The hacienda patio fountain was a col-laborative effort with students result-

ing in a series of tiles that wereincorporated into a decorative patternfor a fountain in the courtyard of thehacienda. Charlot writes of the tiled

fountain project, "Nearly everyone ofthe FVS art students pitched in tomake a success of the decoration.Mexican motives, desert and moun-tain scenes, beasts of the earth and thesea, boots and hats, birds' nests and

donkeys, harmonize surprisinglyagainst the plain adobe wall and green

. "Vines.The class also created a coffee table

for the hacienda. Well-worn, it is stillhoused at the school.

Another project completed at theFountain Valley School underCharlot's direction was the set for the

Fine Arts Center production of Gilbertand Sullivan's The Sorcerer,performedin March of 1948. The set included

an old English village, complete withcastle and Shakespearean cottages.Final painting of the set was done atthe Fine Arts center, but the originalactivity commenced in the FountainValley School classrooms. In 1949 asimilarly elaborate set was created forThe Mikado. It included a full-scale

Japanese wooden arch painted intensered. The class also created printedposters for the production which weredisplayed throughout ColoradoSprings.

Right above: Lavanderas - WomenWashing, Secreta ria de Educacion,

Mexico D.F.,1923. The picture on the

back cover is a detail of this painting.

Right: Jean Charlot, Diego Rivera andRivera's wife Frida Kahlo in 1931 at the

Palacio de Cortes, Cuernavaca, Mexico.

The gentleman with Kahlo is not

identified. Photographer is unknown.

The photo is from the Charlot collection

photo album at the University of HawaiiHamilton Library.

.fPRING 1999

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Below: Fountain tiles at the Fountain Valley School hacienda

courtyard, designed and executed in 1947.

Bottom: Detail of the tile table, designed and executed In

1947, at the Fountain Valley School hacienda.

1

Photo by Glenda Came

22

During the 1948 and 1949 schoolyears, Charlot also offered some of hispersonal art collection for show at theFountain Valley School. These piecesincluded works of Mexican

printmaker Jose Guadalupe Posada,photographer Edward Weston, andMexican artist Emilio Amero. Charlot

is credited with bringing Posada's fa-mous woodcuts to light while work-ing with the muralists in Mexico City.His interest in and scholarly study ofpopular Mexican art has been re-corded in several books.

On another level, Charlot's love of

teaching and devotion to promotionof arts events within the communityare evident in his detailed and gentlewritings chronicling his experienceswith young artists at the FountainValley and their commitment to thesuccess of several community artsevents.

Several of Charlot's art works are

in private collections in ColoradoSprings. There are at least two trueFrescos in homes in the downtown

area, one of which he and his familyoccupied during his tenure in thecommunity. The fresco, Tortillera, islocated in the mud/ storage room offthe kitchen of the modest downtownhome. In the tradition of a true fresco,

painted into wet plaster, the paintingis in surprisingly good condition, hav-ing survived over 50 years of remod-eling and tenants.

Frescos are created by applyingwater-soluble color to the surface of

wet plaster. The color mixes withplaster and dries, producing an ex-tremely durable work. The approxi-mately 3' x 4' fresco in ColoradoSprings depicts a woman preparingtortillas, her infant strapped to herback and cradled in the traditional

Mexican rebozo(shawl). Its subtle el-egance is testimony to Charlot'suniqueabilitytoportrayeverydaylilewith emotion and grace. The frescois signed JC 48, a typical signature forhim.

Another piece in a local, privatecollection depicts a Mexican kitchen

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scene. Titled Mexican Kitchen, thissmall oil shows the choreography ofa typical Mexican kitchen, again illus-trating Charlot's affinity for both Latinculture and the more simple processesin lives of people from every culture.The oil's geometric shapes and linearconstruction show its viewers that

what appears to be mundane, thepreparation of a meal of corn tortillas,actually requires a great deal of coor-dination and symmetry. The piece isat once complicated, dynamic, andsimple.

In addition to private collections,Charlot's work is included in the lo-cal Collections of the Colorado

Springs Fine Arts Center (CSFAC) andthe Fremont Center for the Arts in

Canon City. Both institutions owncopies of the 1948 lithograph, Mexi-can Mother. Charlot completed thelithograph in Colorado Springs andhe was photographed by staff photog-rapher, Bill Bowers, in 1948 as he be-gan the layout preparations for thelithograph. The lithograph was of-fered by the CSFAC as a membershippremium in 1948.

In 1949, Charlot and his familymoved to Hawaii where he continued

to produce easel paintings and pro-vide illustrations for many books.Charlot joined the faculty at the Uni-versity of Hawaii where he taught,studied the native cultures in the area,

and painted many frescos in churchesand other institutions.

From Hawaii, Charlot continued to

maintain relationships with friends inColorado Springs. The oil mentionedabove, Mexican Kitchen, was a gift toa local arts educator. Several privatecollectors in the area have examplesof wonderful hand-printed Christmascards Charlot traditionally distributedto his friends throughout his life.

In addition to the projects previ-ously discussed, Charlot's extensivecreative work includes hundreds ofarticles on art and art criticism. As a

fine art critic and writer, he publishedseveral books on art and artists. He

,produced ceramic tiles, sculpture, and

/PRINc.t 1999

-......

Below: Mexican Fiesta/Large Mallnches (Lithograph),

from a private collection in Colorado Springs.

Bottom: Mexican Kitchen (011),painted by Charlot In 19n

and signed "for CT,JC." Froma private collection In

Colorado Springs.

Photoby Glenda Carne

23

Below: Tortillera, fresco painted in 1948 by Charlot in hIs

home, now a private resIdence in Colorado Springs.

Bottom: Juan DIego and the Virgin of Guadalupe, Charlot's

illustration of a 1955 book by Helen Rand Parrish, "OurLady

of Guadalupe."

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Photo by Glenda Came

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24

mosaics while continuing his interestin murals in the fresco form. He com-

pleted frescos at ASU, Notre Dame,and Syracuse University.

Throughout his personal life andartistic career, Charlot managed tosynthesize ideas that appear to be indirect opposition. In Mexico he so-cialized with a group of people whowere clearly and openly Marxist, in-cluding Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo,and David Alfaro Siqueiros. He feltit better to interact with a group ofCommunist artists whom he consid-

ered geniuses than with mediocreChristian artists.

When he moved to Hawaii, he in-

corporated the jagged angles of thecoastal cliffs and rocks into the indig-enous faces he produced in his fres-cos and illustrations on the island.

While his images of Mexico wereearth-toned, and rounded, his Hawai-

ian images are equally organic. Theymanage to capture ocean colors andintroduce mineral-like faceted angu-lar shapes. Hawaii became Charlot'shome for the duration of his life. His

love of Hawaii and its people is ex-pressed in his later work.

Charlot was diagnosed with pros-tate cancer in 1974 and died in Marchof 1979. He is remembered as an art-

ist, teacher, art historian, author, pub-lisher, art critic and ethnographer. Heis one of the few non-Mexican artists

who participated in the fascinatingmuralist movement in 1920s Mexico.

Charlot's experiences in Europeand Mexico are imprinted in the workhe created in Colorado Springs. WhenCharlot was less than forty years ofage, James W. Lane wrote, liThe Workof Jean Charlot has a soul. He is aman obviously to whom ideas, as wellas the manner of expressing thoseideas, mean much. Simple,unconfounded, is his wise vision of

humanity." It is for perhaps these rea-sons that Charlot was able to transi-

tion and transform from being a part,in Mexico, of one of the great artisticmovements of the twentieth century,to the Arts Students League in New

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J

York City, to The Fountain ValleySchool on the southeastern plains ofColorado.

His talents and appreciation of hu-manity were diverse. When consid-ering the artistic history of ColoradoSprings, Charlot's short tenure ismore than worthy of acknowledge-ment and study. ~

Author's thanks: Clara Duff of the FountainValley School, Hunter & Lynn Frost, BillBowers of the Colorado Springs Fine ArtsCenter, Kathleen Deckard of Bernard EwellArt Appraisals, Dr. John Charlot and Dr.Nancy Morris of the University of Hawaii.

Photography: Local photographs by BillBowers and Glenda Carne. Mexico photo-graphs by Egmont Contreras (Mexico City).Photograph of Charlot with Frida Kahlo andDiego Rivera courtesy of the University ofHawaii Hamilton Library Special Collections.

Selected Bibliography

Charlot, Jean. The Mexican Mural Renais-sance 1920-1925. New Haven and Lon-

don: Yale University Press, 1963;second printing 1967.

Charlot, Jean. An Artist on Art: Collected

Essays. 2 vols. Honolulu: Universityof Hawaii Press, 1972.

Charlot, Jonn. "The Formation of the Art-

ist: Jean Charlot's French Period." In

Jean Charlot: A Retrospective. Hono-

lulu: The University of Hawaii Art

Gallery, 1990.Jensen, James. "Jean Charlot: The Nude

Figure." In Jean Charlot: A Retrospec-

tive. Honolulu: The University of Ha-

waii Art Gallery, 1990.Jensen, James. "The Formation of the

Artist: Jean Charlot's French Period."

In Jean Charlot: A Retrospective. Ho-

nolulu: The University of Hawaii Art

Gallery, 1990.

Kiser, JoAnne. Influence of the Posadas on

the creators of The Mexican Muralist

Movement: Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros,and Charlot. M.A. Thesis. Boulder: The

University of Colorado, 1991.Lane, James W. "Jean Charlot." In Mas-

ters in Modern Art, 105-114. Boston:

Chapman and Grimes, 1936.

Morris, Nancy J. " Jean Charlot's BookIllustrations." In Jean Charlot: A Ret-

rospective. Honolulu: The Universityof Hawaii Art Gallery, 1990.

~

Morse, Peter. Jean Charlot's Prints: A Cata-

logueRaisonne, Honolulu: University ofHawaii Press and the Jean CharlotFoundations, 1976.

Morse, Peter. "Jean Charlot's Techniquein Children's Book Illustration." Uni-

versity of Hawaii Web Site. http://nic2.hawaii.netl-speccoll/charlotmorse.html

(11/3/98).

Parrish, Helen Rand. Our Lady ofGuadalupe. New York: The VikingPress, 1955.

Thompson, Karen. "Jean Charlot: Artistand Scholar." In Jean Charlot: A Retro-

spective. Honolulu: The University ofHawaii Art Gallery, 1990.

Weaver, Mike. "Jean Charlot's Repertoryof Motifs." In Jean Charlot: A Retro-

spective. Honolulu: The University of

Hawaii Art Gallery, 1990.

The Fountain Valley School (Alumni Bul-

letins) Yearbooks. Colorado Springs,CO: 1948/49.

Internet resources:

http://www.lib.usm.edu/-degrum

http://libwww.syr.edu/aboutsuI/depts/speccolllfindinga/html/charlot.htm

http://nic2.hawaii.netl-speccoll/charlot.html

Charles CraigPikes Peak Indian Painter

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