Olga Costa facts for kids

Olga Costa (born August 28, 1913 – died June 28, 1993) was a talented painter and cultural promoter. She moved to Mexico from Germany when she was twelve years old. Olga started studying art at the Academy of San Carlos. However, she left after only three months to help her family. During this time, she met her husband, the artist José Chávez Morado.

Her marriage connected her to Mexico's lively art and intellectual world. She began to develop her painting skills on her own, with her husband's encouragement. Olga had many art shows in Mexico. Her art was also sent to be sold in the United States. She helped create and develop several art galleries, cultural groups, and three museums in the state of Guanajuato. For her amazing work, she received the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes, among other awards.

Olga Costa's Life Story

Olga Costa was born in 1913 in Leipzig, Germany. Her parents, Jacobo Kostakowsky and Ana Falvisant Bovglarevokeylandel, were from Czarist Russia. They left the Ukraine area to escape the persecution of Jewish people just before the First World War. They first went to Leipzig, where Olga was born. After the war began, they moved to Berlin, where her sister Lya was born.

When the war ended, her family faced serious money problems. This led her father to become very interested in political ideas. He was arrested several times by the German government. But when he was sentenced to death, the family escaped to Mexico in 1925. They arrived at the port of Veracruz and settled in Mexico City that same year.

Olga's full name was Olga Kostakowsky Falvisant. But soon after arriving in Mexico, she started signing her name Olga Costa. This name sounded more Spanish. It became the name she used throughout her art career. She and her sister Lya first attended the Colegio Alemán (German School) in Mexico City. Lya later became a writer. Olga loved music, playing the piano and singing in the school choir. Her father greatly encouraged her musical talents. She first saw painting at concerts in the Anfiteatro Simón Bolivar. Diego Rivera had painted a mural there, and its colors fascinated Olga.

In 1933, Costa joined the Academy of San Carlos. But she left just three months later. She needed to work to help her family. Before leaving, she studied painting with Carlos Mérida and engraving with Emilio Amero. It was there that she met her future husband, José Chávez Morado. Mérida later called Costa the "white angel of Mexican painting." This nickname came from her unique painting style. She did not change her art to fit Western culture. Costa herself said she would keep painting in a traditional way. She wanted to create art about Mexican nationalism, like Diego Rivera and Jose Chavez Morado.

Costa and Chávez Morado married on May 18, 1935, in Mexico City. Her marriage opened doors to new art and intellectual groups in Mexico. Chávez Morado's career was growing, and he encouraged her to be part of the country's cultural scene. In 1941, she lived briefly in San Miguel Allende. Her husband worked as a teacher at a local art school for foreigners. In Mexico City during the 1940s and 1950s, their social life centered around the Monument to the Revolution area. This area was full of people who had fled the Spanish Civil War. This included artists like Lola Álvarez Bravo and María Izquierdo. These connections led to Costa's first art exhibition.

In 1955, she lived for a while in Guanajuato. Chávez Morado was painting murals at the Alhóndiga de Granaditas. Eleven years later, the couple moved back to Guanajuato permanently. There, Costa continued to paint and promote culture. She even hosted Queen Elizabeth II at her home in the late 1970s.

Olga came from a family with leftist political views. She was politically active with other artists for many years.

Costa passed away on June 28, 1993, in Guanajuato.

Painting and Cultural Promotion

Olga Costa was one of Mexico's important female artists in the 20th century. This was a time when men mostly dominated the art world. Even though she studied briefly at the Academy of San Carlos, she started painting in 1936. She said it began "as a game" and she didn't plan to do it professionally. This started when she followed her husband, José Chávez Morado, to Xalapa, Veracruz. He went there to open a painting school. Chávez Morado encouraged her to try painting, even though she was unsure.

Through her husband, Costa was active in Mexico's art and intellectual circles. She became friends with Inés Amor, who owned the Galería de Arte Mexicano. Amor invited Costa to show her work for the first time in 1945. She had major solo shows at the same gallery in 1948, 1950, 1962, and 1971. Amor also began sending Costa's art to the United States, where it sold for higher prices. Other solo exhibitions included the Galería de Arte Contemporáneo (1955) and the Palacio de Bellas Artes (1979). She also participated in many group shows in Mexico and other countries. Her work was also shown at the Museo de Arte Moderno in 1990.

Her main canvas paintings include Cabeza arcaica and La novia. But her most famous work is probably La vendedora de frutas from 1951.

Besides painting, she spent most of her life promoting the arts in Mexico. In 1941, she opened the Galería La Espiral with her husband and other artists. Costa directed this gallery. It was more a meeting place for artists than a business for selling art. It welcomed international visitors like Alfred H. Barr, Jr. from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1943, the gallery moved and became the Sociedad de Arte Moderno. This group helped organize a big exhibition of Picasso's works.

She became a member of the Sociedad Para el Impulso de las Artes Plásticas in 1948. The next year, she helped found the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

In addition to her paintings and promotional work, Costa also worked with theater. She designed sets and costumes for the Ballet Waldeen in 1942. She also created one mural. In 1952, she made a mosaic mural called Motivos sobre el agua. It was for the Agua Hedionda Spa in Cuautla.

Later in life, she and Chávez Morado worked to create several museums in Guanajuato. In 1975, they gave their collection of ancient, colonial, and folk art to the Alhóndiga de Granaditas museum. In 1979, the couple founded the Museo del Pueblo de Guanajuato. It featured 18th and 19th-century pieces from their own collection. In 1993, the couple donated their home. It was a former hacienda in Guanajuato city. It became the Casa de Arte Olga Costa-José Chávez Morado museum. This museum holds a permanent collection of 293 pieces. These were collected by the couple over their lives. They include ceramics, furniture, and works by both painters.

Near the end of her life, she received many awards for her art and cultural work. A book about her life, Olga Costa, was published in 1984. In 1989, she received the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes. That same year, she was named a "Distinguished Daughter of Guanajuato." She was also honored by the Festival Internacional Cervantino. In 1993, she and her husband received the El Pípila de Plata prize. This was from the city of Guanajuato. In 2000, the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo held an exhibition about their lives. The government of Guanajuato created the Bienal de Pintura y Escultura Olga Costa in her honor. This is an art competition only for women artists.

Olga Costa's Paintings

In Western art, women were often painted from a male point of view. Mexican female artists like Olga Costa showed women differently. They painted women from a female perspective. They also challenged the usual idea of what a Mexican woman should be. Costa painted Mexican women in their diverse and independent ways. Examples include her works like The Bride and The Fruit Vendor. She used a "Costumbrismo" style. This means she showed local daily life and customs. She used bright colors, typical of traditional Mexican painting.

La Vendedora de Frutas (The Fruit Vendor) from 1951 is a famous painting. It shows a fruit vendor in the center-right of the picture. She is surrounded by many fruits native to Mexico. These fruits are displayed and ready to be tasted and sold. You can see sugar cane, pears, mameys, and guavas. This artwork shows Mexico's harvest and its workers. It highlights the variety of "fruit" that people have worked hard to produce. Costa again shows a woman, this time a hard-working woman in an honorable job. She presents the "fruit" of Mexico in a traditional painting style.

Costa's painting The Bride is an example of how she explored marriage. It shows a bride in the center-left. She is surrounded by flowers and wears a colorful dress. But she has a sad face on her wedding day. The painting suggests the bride is not the "ideal" woman. It shows she might not have a say in her situation. The wilting flowers behind the bride can suggest a loss of innocence. It comments on the woman's situation and how others might have unrealistic views of women.

Olga Costa's Artistry

Olga Costa took some classes in painting and engraving at the Academy of San Carlos. But she was only there for three months in 1933. She developed her skills mostly on her own, starting as a hobby in 1936. Her husband, José Chávez Morado, encouraged her. Because of this, she is mostly considered a self-taught artist.

Throughout her life, she painted everyday subjects, still lifes, portraits, and landscapes. Her works are known for their strong use of color. She is called a colorista, like artists such as Rufino Tamayo. While her painting techniques were not always perfect, her work's simple quality was often seen as very moving. One common feature in her art is the desire to make one main part stand out. Other elements in the painting would support this main idea. Landscapes often appeared, not as the main focus, but as backgrounds. They helped explain the main idea. She was not interested in painting things exactly as they looked. Instead, she wanted to capture her impression of what she saw. This often led to some distortion in her images. She also experimented with colors. She preferred painting female figures, especially indigenous women and children in her earlier works. Her portrait paintings were mostly of women, with a few early exceptions of her husband.

She began painting when Mexico was very nationalistic. It was also against capitalism and imperialism. This was strengthened by the Mexican muralism movement. While her art focused on Mexico, it was not political. Her first works were formal and rigid. They focused on Mexican folklore with bright colors. They showed influence from Diego Rivera. They also had geometric shapes from Carlos Mérida and fruit themes from Rufino Tamayo. These were called costumbrista works. But they also had elements of Expressionist style, like María Izquierdo's work. Her early art is seen as delicate due to her lack of formal training. Many of the costumbrista elements were added to help sell the work in the United States. Her paintings often had one or more elements larger than they should be. For example, the chair in La Novia (1941) is very big. Her early models, especially in the 1930s, were local people.

In the mid-1940s, her techniques started to change. This was especially true for how she used materials and color. She began to move away from Mexican muralism. In the 1950s, her work developed with richer and more varied colors. She used deep greens, blues, oranges, reds, and pinks. These contrasted with the quiet and serious images of Mexico's indigenous people. The compositions were formal and academic. They showed a strong influence from Rivera. Her most famous work, La vendedora de frutas from 1951, is from this time. Most of her landscape paintings are from the 1950s onwards. These also included still lifes and images related to Day of the Dead altars. By the 1960s, she used paler colors. These included pinks, grays, beiges, and greens. They did not contrast as strongly. There was also more influence from Expressionism.

Her later work is more abstract. She painted landscapes of the Bajío region, using red and deep green tones. These show changing color combinations. They have a strong influence from Rufino Tamayo. She focused on yellows, ochres, and purples. The way she showed textures became more detailed. This was especially true in her Bajío landscapes. In these works, human figures almost disappear. But things people create, like houses and roads, still remain. This is a form of abstract art that still shows recognizable things. Her last works were made between 1978 and 1979. These include Ladera and Niebla. These paintings create a feeling of large space. It seems to go beyond the painting's frame. The eye travels over the different colors without stopping.

Literature

• Sabine Hoffmann, Stefan Weppelmann (Hrgs.): Olga Costa, Dialogues with Mexican Modernism, Hirmer Publishers, Munich 2022, ISBN: 978-3-7774-4077-4.

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See also

In Spanish: Olga Costa para niños