Two Standing Mexican Figures (Fruit Vendors from Tehuantepec). Costume design for the ballet H.P. (Horsepower)

Diego Rivera

c.1927–32

Diego Rivera painted these watercolor-and-pencil costume designs to translate the colors, silhouettes, and social character of Tehuantepec fruit vendors into theatrical costumes for the ballet H.P. (Horsepower).

At first glance the sheet reads like a folk tableau: two tall, flattened figures rendered in warm ochres and crisp pencil lines, the woman posing with a brightly patterned basket of fruit and the man standing with a curved blade and an exaggerated hat against a spare white ground.

The drawings show Rivera bringing Mexican popular and indigenous dress into modern theatrical design, reflecting the post‑revolutionary project of making vernacular culture central to international modernism.

Palette

Exhibitions

Diego Rivera

1931

Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art

1940

Color Reproductions of Mexican Frescoes by Diego Rivera

1933

Mexican Art

1978