Sugar cane, design for H.P. (Horsepower)

Rivera, Diego (1886-1957)


Item type:
drawing
Date of creation:
1927
Height:
35.6 cm  (14 in.)
Width:
24.8 cm  (9 3/4 in.)
Technique / Medium:
watercolor and pencil on paper
Place of creation:
New York (New York, United States)

Description

The watercolor belongs to a group of studies that Diego Rivera executed for the ballet-symphony "Caballos de vapor, sinfonía de baile" (know as "Horse-Power" in English by the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez (1899-1978) in 1926–32. It was attributed to the dancer Catherine Littlefeld (1908-1951) and premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House, Philadelphia, on 31 March 1932 under the direction of Leopold Stokowski (1892-1977). "The 28-minute work […] contrasted the industrial North (meaning the U.S.) with the tropical South (meaning Mexico), demonstrating how the two cultures were mutually dependent." (https://catherinelittlefield.com/notable-works/h-p-horsepower, last accessed: 10 April 2017)

Image URLs

image link 1
Link to the object in the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Bibliographic references

Belnap, Jeffrey. "Diego Rivera's greater America Pan-American Patronage, indigenism, and H.P", Cultural critique 63 (2015) 61-98.

Parker, Robert L. "Carlos Chávez and the ballet: A study in persistence", Dance chronicle 8/3-4 (1985) 179-210.

Blitzstein, Marc. "Music and theatre—1932", Modern music 9/4 (1932) 164-168.

Taylor Gibson, Christina. "The reception of Carlos Chávez's Horsepower: A Pan-American communication failure", American music 30/2 (2012) 157-193.

Barzel, Ann. "A portrait of Catherine and Dorothie Littlefield", Dancing female: Lives and issues of women in contemporary dance, ed. by Sharon E. Friedler and Susan B. Glazer (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997) 25-27.

Notes

See also RIdIM record nos. 4918-4938 and 4940-4941.

RIdIM record id

4939