Rosa Rolanda (Rosemonde Cowan; Rose Rolando; Mrs. Miguel Covarrubias; September 6, 1895 – March 25, 1970) was an American multidisciplinary artist, dancer, and choreographer.

Biography

Rolanda was born in

Azusa, California Azusa ( Tongva: ''Azuksa'', meaning "skunk") is a city in the San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County, California, United States, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains and located east of downtown Los Angeles. Its population wa ...

, in 1895. Her father, Henry Charles Cowan, was an engineer and her mother, Guadalupe Ruelas, was of Mexican descent. Rolanda began her artistic career in New York in 1916, as a celebrated dancer in Broadway

revues A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during ...

. Rolanda’s debut performance was to Lee Shubert's ''Over the Top,'' which sparked a continued dance career throughout the 1920s. After a tour in Europe with the

Ziegfeld Follies The ''Ziegfeld Follies'' were a series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 to 1931, with renewals in 1934, 1936, 1943, and 1957. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as '' The Ziegfeld Foll ...

dance troupe, Rolanda performed in the musical ''Around the Town.'' Soon after, while working on '' The Garrick Gaieties,'' Rolanda met Miguel Covarrubias on set. They began a romantic relationship in 1924, and in the following year the couple traveled to Mexico, where Rolanda began photography. Albums of her images were published in Covarrubias's best-selling books ''Island of Bali'' (1938) and ''Mexico South: Isthmus of Tehuantepec'' (1946), and her work was also featured in the "Ameridinian" issue of Wolfgang Paalen's journal '' DYN'', published in 1943. During the late 1920s or early 1930s, Rolanda experimented with

photogram A photogram is a Photography, photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light. The usual result is a negative shadow im ...

s, creating significant series of

surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

self-portraits that may have been influenced by

Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...

, who photographed Rolanda in Paris in 1923. She probably began painting around 1926. The majority of Rolanda's canvases depict colorful, folkloric scenes of children and festivals, portraits of friends such as the movie actresses Dolores del Río and María Félix, and self-portraits. Rolanda and Covarrubias married in 1930, and by 1935 they had permanently settled into his family home in Tizapan El Alto, close to Mexico City. In 1952, Rolanda exhibited her paintings in a solo show at the prominent Galeria Souza in Mexico City. By that year, she and Covarrubias were separated and Rolanda was producing works such as ''Autorretrato'' (self-portrait), conveying her innermost turmoil onto canvas. She died in 1970 in Mexico City, Mexico.

Filmography

* '' The Blue Bird'' (1918) * ''

Woman A woman is an adult female human. Before adulthood, a female child or Adolescence, adolescent is referred to as a girl. Typically, women are of the female sex and inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and women with functi ...

'' (1918)

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rolanda, Rosa 1895 births 1970 deaths American female dancers 20th-century American painters 20th-century American photographers American choreographers American artists of Mexican descent People from Azusa, California 20th-century American dancers 20th-century American women American emigrants to Mexico