1936 ANNA MAE WONG: Armando DRECHSLER Mexico Calendar Art "La Malinche"

Description

1936 ANNA MAE WONG: Armando DRECHSLER Mexico Calendar Art "La Malinche"
1936 ANNA MAE WONG: Armando DRECHSLER Mexico Calendar Art "La Malinche"
Armando Drechlser (artist), “La Malinche”, color illustration for original 1936 Mexican calendar.
7 x 9½" image affixed to 11 x 17" backing page for a New Year's calendar, with Drechsler’s signature in the print.
"La Malinche" was a legendary Mexican woman of the 16th century who was interpreter, intermediary and lover of the Conquistador Cortes during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. She was illustrated by popular German-born Mexican artist using the facial features of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American Hollywood movie star.
Wong starred in several films of the early “talkie” era, but after being turned down for the leading role in the film version of Pearl Buck’s
Good Earth
for purely racial reasons, the year this calendar was published, she left the US to tour China, visiting her family’s ancestral village (she herself was born in Los Angeles) and studying the Chinese language. Drechsler, meanwhile, was celebrated in Mexico for his vivid colorful calendar art of women notable in Mexican history, going back to the Aztec period. He and Wong died in the same year, 1961.
Drechsler’s commercial art is now avidly collected in its own right. The last copy of this calendar art which we could locate in an Ebay auction was in 2007, selling for 0 – ironically without noting the Anna Mae Wong connection.
The calendar page is in Very Good condition, apart from a tiny hole above the “Feliz Ano Nuevo” caption at the top of the page, as issued. Any lines or spots that appear in the scan are merely from the cellophane outer backing used to protect the page.