Geometrically Patterned Female Figure (400–100 BCE): Art, History and Details

Geometrically Patterned Female Figure (400–100 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Artists of the Chupícuaro culture, based to the north of modern-day Mexico City, may be best known for hollow ceramic figurines like this one. Always female and often apparently pregnant, such figurines commonly are painted with stepped geometric motifs in vibrant, highly burnished slips (creamy mixtures of water and crushed minerals). The meanings of the motifs and the figurines themselves are poorly understood.

Object facts

• Title: Geometrically Patterned Female Figure
• Date: 400–100 BCE
• Culture: Mesoamerica, Guanajuato or Michoacán, Chupícuaro
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Ceramic, slip
• Dimensions: Overall: 15.6 x 8 x 5.7 cm (6 1/8 x 3 1/8 x 2 1/4 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1990.155

A detail from the museum

This figure was formed in two halves that were hollowed out and joined at the hips.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Gruener

Further reading listed by the museum

• Young-Sánchez, Margaret. "The Gruener Collection of Pre-Columbian Art." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 79, no. 7 (1992): 234-75.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.