NEGRO DRAWINGS, 1927, ONE OF 100 COPIES WITH A SIGNED ORIGINAL DRAWING BY MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS

COVARRUBIAS, Miguel. Negro Drawings. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927. Quarto, original black and blue cloth, original dust jacket, possibly supplied from the trade edition. $4000.

Signed limited first edition, number 50 of only 100 copies with a signed original drawing by Covarrubias opposite the limitation page, with frontispiece and 56 plates, eight of which are in color.

José Miguel Covarrubias was a Mexican painter, caricaturist, ethnologist and art historian. In 1924, at the age of 19, he moved to New York City after receiving a grant from the Mexican government. Mexican poet José Juan Tablada and New York Times critic/photographer Carl Van Vechten introduced him to New York's literary and cultural elite, and Covarrubias would soon count many notables among his friends, including Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and W.C. Handy. His work began to be featured in several top magazines, including the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, where he eventually became one of their premiere caricaturists. He also illustrated books for a number of authors in his circle.

In New York, Covarrubias was particularly taken with the Harlem Jazz club scene, which he often frequented. Many of the caricatures in Negro Drawings come from his forays into the uptown clubs. As noted by editor and critic Frank Crowninshield, "The subjects for the sketches in this volume were picked at random from the welter of colored life in New York. In all of them we feel, not only humor, truth and mastery of three-dimensional form… but a rarer quality, which, for want of a better word, we may call 'aliveness,' a feeling of actuality, plus a rhythmic, almost sensuous movement. In many of these portraits a deep sympathy is evident; in some of them a touch of pathos" (from the Introduction). With a preface by Ralph Barton. Without scarce original slipcase.

Images fine, mild soiling to some leaf margins and preliminary blanks; cloth with a bit of wear. Dust jacket with chipping, splitting along folds, one tape repair, toning to spine. Very good condition.