HALE WOODRUFF (1900 - 1980)
Untitled (Mexican Town).

Watercolor on thin cream paper board, 1936. 533x673 mm; 21x26½ inches. Signed and inscribed "To Ms. Florence M. Read, Christmas, 1936" in watercolor, lower left.

Provenance: gift of the artist, Florence Matilda Read, Atlanta (1936); gift to private collection, Atlanta (1953); thence by descent, private collection, California (1987).

Florence Matilda Read was the last white woman president of Spelman College from 1927 to 1953. The owner's mother was an art student of Hale Woodruff's at Spelman College in the later 1930s and later worked a librarian there in the early 1950s. When Read retired, she gifted this watercolor to the owner's mother.

This vibrant modernist scene is a scarce example of Hale Woodruff's watercolor painting from his brief Mexican period. With a General Education Board Fellowship, Woodruff traveled with International Institute of Teachers College at Columbia Universtiy to study the mural movement in Mexico. Over a six week period, he visited Cuernavaca, Taxco, San Miguel de Allende and Mexico City in the summer of 1936. Upon his arrival, Woodruff had the opportunity to work as Diego Rivera's assistant, painting fresco panels for the ballroom of the Hotel Reforma in Mexico City. Woodruff presented a selection of these Mexican paintings in his Exhibition of Paintings of Georgia and Mexico at the Atlanta University Library in 1937. Amaki/Brownlee pp. 64-66.