Showing posts with label Popol Vuh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Popol Vuh. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Diego Rivera...Human sacrifice before Tohil 1931







Watercolor painted by Diego Rivera in San Francisco, Calif. during the summer of 1931, originally commissioned to illustrate a never-published English translation of the Popol Vuh by John Weatherwax.


Friday, October 18, 2013

Diego Rivera... The Popol Vuh... illustrations 1930-33




In 1930, while in San Francisco, Mexican artist Diego Rivera began a series of illustration for 
a translation of the Popol Vuh by North American writer John Weatherwax. Both men shared
 a fascination with the indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica. The Popol Vuh, or council book, 
recounts the ideas and traditions, origins and dynastic chronology up to the year 1550 of 
the ancient Quiché Maya inhabitants of the highlands of present-day Guatemala.
Beginning as oral tradition, the Popol Vuh was set down in hieroglyphic form, then into what 
Popol Vuh scholar Dennis Tedlock has called an “alphabetic substitute,” before being 
transcribed and translated into Spanish by the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez in the eighteenth century.


 photo diegoriverapopolvuh193031_zpsc9a6f975.jpg

The Creation
Illustration for Popol Vuh, 1930–1933.
Watercolor and gouache on paper. 48 × 64 cm. (19 × 25¼ in.)


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The Trials of Hero Twins 
Illustration for Popol Vuh, 1930–1933.
Watercolor and gouache on paper. 
31 × 48 cm. (12¼ × 18¾ in.)



 photo diegoriverapopolvuh19303123_zps7d087eac.jpg

Human Sacrifice Before Tohil 
Illustration for Popol Vuh, 1930–1933.
Gouache on paper. 
31 × 48 cm. (12¼ × 18¾ in.)