Norah Borges

Untitled

Date: ca. 1920

Technique: Fresco on Mallorcan sandstone and plaster

Dimensions: 53 x 47 cm

Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma, Pere A. Serra donation

Reg. no.: 491

On display

The work produced as a mural in the Hotel del Artista in Valldemossa conserves its original format. The theme, a religious one in which we see the Virgin Mary with child, is executed in an avant-garde style of schematic figures and faceted background, in which we may highlight influences by German Expressionism and an early Cubism. The chromatic austerity typical of Cubism is broken with the intense blue of the Virgin’s cloak. The fact that a Mallorcan “pagesa” or peasant, a female figure carrying a pitcher of water on her head, appears in the bottom right of the picture, is significant. This symbol, which Norah Borges incorporated in her work as a result of her stay on Mallorca, and which is in harmony with the avant-garde interest in exotic, African and oriental cultures, is maintained as an identity mark in her subsequent works.

E.C.

Artist biography