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Rosa Covarrubias

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Rosa Covarrubias, as she is known today was a versatile and gifted individual, not unlike her husband, Miguel Covarrubias. Rosa was a glamorous modern dancer, a skilled painter, a discerning collector, an inspired chef, an outstanding photographer, an international personality known for her dazzling beauty, and a woman with an unquenchable gusto for life. Rosamonde Cowan was born in Los Angeles on September 6, 1895. Her mother, Guadalupe Ruelas, a native Mexican, was raised in Azusa, California, near the old San Gabriel Mission where her maternal relatives are buried in the churchyard. Her father, Harry Charles Cowan was of Scottish descent, born in Springfield, Illinois, and raised in California. In high school, Rose was interested in gymnastics and studied with Marion Morgan in Los Angeles. It was Morgan who persuaded Rose to take her summer class in interpretive dance at Berkeley. This decision changed the direction of Rose’s life, as she was among six students (out of 12,000) chosen to go to New York and join the Marion Morgan Dancers - a modern dance company in the style of Isadora Duncan, popularly referred to as the “barefoot dancers.” Morgan was the first to bring such dancing to New York. The young dancers became quite the vogue at musicals and social benefits with their classical Greek, Roman and Egyptian dance pantomimes.

In 1915, Rose took the stage name of Rolanda, borrowing the name of one of her well-known relatives in the Mexican community of Los Angeles. Not only was she recognized as one of more talented dancers in her troupe, she was equally admired for her costumes, which she herself designed. The vaudeville musical “The Lilac Domino” was Rose’s first solo engagement on Broadway and was a smashing success. She had entered the theatrical world with enormous impact and, thereafter, was swamped with professional offers. In 1918, she left the Marion Morgan Dancers to continue solo work and choreography. She became one of the most admired dancers in New York and, foremost among the young dancers who introduced the exoticism of Java and East Indian dance to the Broadway revue. In one very popular number, she astounded the audience night after night by playing the goldsticks to accompany her sensuous movements in a wild and syncopated Samoan folk dance. Her appearance was very exotic. With her athletic, bronze-tinged body, her rhythmic and lithe spinning, her fiery personality, and striking individuality, she captured and held the audience’s attention. After each performance, she was greeted with extended applause, and her dressing room was filled with flowers, boxes of candy accompanied by declarations of love and invitations to dine. Rose also worked in silent films. She had both a personal and work relationship with the French film director, Maurice Tourneur, “The first of the visual stylists,” who in 1915 was head of Paragon Studios in New Jersey. Marion Morgan had insisted that her dancers be well read in history and mythology, undergo musical training and acquire knowledge about the countries and the lives of the people from whence the dances they were to perform had originated. Tourneur was a painter, actor, and musician who had mastered the history of costume and decoration. “In a word, he had studied everything that bears upon the making of pictures…” Both mentors contributed to and prepared Rose for her brilliant interpretive and creative work in dance. She choreographed and danced in five of Tourneur’s silent films. In 1921, Rose created “Ballet of Life” an allegory, for Lois Weber's film, What Do Men Want? Not only did she create the choreography, she danced, designed the costumes for the seven dancers, and chose the then avant-garde music of Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy for the ballet. This ballet was her choreographic tour de force and shows how much she had absorbed from her association with Morgan and Tourneur.

Dance

Rose’s contribution to the dance was truly ultramodern. Her intention always was to express the ideas in her head through her body. Although as dancer and choreographer she was for the most part self-made, her success was such that she grew to be a favorite with dance critics, enjoying a career that lasted for 10 years.

At social benefits where she performed, Rose met prominent families such as the Whitneys, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers, who became life-long friends. She also continued to acquire a string of admirers, including Avery Hopwood, America’s most prolific dramatist, to whom she was briefly engaged, and the caricaturist, Ralph Barton. 

And it wasn’t just Americans. After seeing her dance, the Mexican painter, Adolfo Best-Maugard, invited Rose to the apartment he shared with Miguel Covarrubias. Soon Miguel, like so many others before him, was bewitched. It wasn’t only because of Rose’s beauty, but by her striking stage presence and her splendid dancing. To win her attention, Miguel offered to design the sets and costumes for a Mexican number, “Rancho Mexicano” that Rose was choreographing for the Garrick Gaieties. She accepted. The show ran for most of 1925, was to be her last stage engagement, and Rose and Miguel’s first collaboration. Many artists were inspired - costume designers, caricaturists, painters, and last but not least photographers. In the twenties and thirties photography was the craze. The most fashionable and creative ones asked her to pose for them and she did often. Today all are famous – Edward Steichen, Arnold Genthe, Alfred Stiegliz, Edward Weston, and Nicholas Muray. Contact with these artists awakened Rose’s interest in photography. Beginning in 1923, for more than a year, she toured Europe with the Ziegfield Follies. In Paris, she frequently visited the studio of Man Ray where she observed and learned the technique of Rayogram from its inventor. From the time Rose and Miguel fell in love, they lived and traveled together openly until their marriage in 1930. This was quite daring, especially when she went with him to Mexico where she met his aristocratic and conservative family. Quite enlightened, when the time came to choose a husband, Rose did not opt for a wealthy socialite or one of the many flamboyant playboys who had pursued her, but for a man with an enormous creative talent, a gentle and sweet man. Never a doubt or regret, she abandoned a successful career on the stage and in film to accompany Miguel in his search for a new direction their lives. In Bali, the beauty of the island and its unique culture inspired Miguel to write Island of Bali. Rose had developed new avenues of artistic expression in order to collaborate with her husband. With her aesthetic and artistic personality that flourished amidst new ideas and exotic cultures, she assisted Miguel with the gathering of information on the role of women, family life, cooking, the marketplace, and, naturally, dance. She also collected folk art, clothing, jewelry and recipes. However, Rose’s most important contribution was her photography. She had fortuitously undertaken an earnest study of photography. As with the dance, she was essentially self-taught, mastering the camera through acute observation and developing her own innovative technique. Of the fifteen hundred photographs that she took, one hundred fourteen illustrate Island of Bali. The editor, Alfred A. Knopf said, “Its portfolio of photographs of Bali would alone make a magnificent book.” When Miguel and Rose returned to live permanently in Mexico in the early forties, the Covarrubias house in Tizapán de las Flores on the outskirts of Mexico City became as widely known as Mabel Dodge’s in Greenwich Village or Gertrude Stein’s salon in Paris, and was a marvelous meeting ground for half the world. She moved in high social and artistic circles. Friends included many of the great personalities of the century and stunningly beautiful women. Once settled in Mexico, two important things occurred. First, this change of country gave Rosa (as you would be now known) the opportunity to connect with her Mexican roots. She decorated her house with a Mexican feel - the color of the walls, the tiles she used in the kitchen and bathrooms. She served wonderful Mexican meals and she dresses in wide colorful skirts and Mexican embroidered blouses with her hair pulled back and tied with ribbons. Secondly, Rosa collaborated with her husband on his next book, Mexico South that was published in 1945 and lovingly dedicated to her. “Rose made new friends, obtained information, collected clothing, folk art, pre-Columbian artifacts, and took many of the photographs, which are so essential a part of this book." Ninety- six photograph were used. Reviewing Mexico South for the New York Times, Diego Rivera praised Rosa, calling her photographs superlative.” Miguel and Rosa continued to work and travel extensively throughout Mexico, recording, photographing, and gathering samples of Indigenous folk art from many regions of the country. Her photographs included scenes from Yucatán, Veracruz, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Michoacán and, of course, Mexico City. Subjects that continued to interest her were women and children, festivals, churches, dwellings, plants, cacti, markets, and folk art figures like the “Judas” that Frida and Diego Rivera so much admired. Some appeared in American publications such as Theatre Arts Monthly, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and in Dyn magazine and several newspapers including Novedades in Mexico City. Both were serious collectors of art. Rosa’s collection was separate from Miguel’s and, for the most part, was kept in her bedroom. She had become an expert in primitive art and was the one who chose the large palmate stone figures from Veracruz that adorned the garden. In addition, she had collected toys and folk art from Bali, Africa, the United States, and Mexico. Included in the Mexican collection were textiles, ceramics, glass, pottery, children’s toys made of wood, and sugar skulls for “All Saints Day,” the latter two placed on a wooden shelf in a corner. Rosa was an astute collector with a marvelous eye and a genius for the picking the best piece in the village market. Antique jewelry from around the world lay in open boxes, pottery jars, and dishes on her dressing table that were filled with Balinese, Sumatran, Chinese, and Mexican pieces. These included Balinese gold and ruby necklaces and rings; pre-Columbian jade, shell, and gold necklaces, pins, and rings, and Greek and African ivory bracelets. A spectacular Mayan necklace, which stood out among all others, was strung with strangely carved jade legs and had been discovered at the bottom of a well on one of their excavations. Rosa’s fascination with jewelry resulted in William Spratling’s asking her in 1940 to design a silver collection for him for sale in New York City. As a lark, Rosa had tried her hand at painting in Paris in 1927, but it wasn’t until she lived in Mexico that she began to paint in earnest. There were wonderful, flamboyant still lives – talavera pottery vases bursting with tropical flowers and butterflies. Portraits of friends’ children were commissioned, and she painted one of Dolores del Rio, one of Maria Felix, and three self-portraits. In the first of these, Rosa is dressed as a Tehuana and was painted for the 1946 March cover of Mademoiselle magazine, the second for Vogue for an article on South Americana fashion, and the third an oil, her most important and revealing work. The portrait revealed a Rosa tormented by her knowledge of Miguel’s new love interest.

 Mexican artists also did paintings of Rosa, among them, Adolfo Best-Maugard, Roberto Montenegro, Diego Rivera and of course, Miguel. On first meeting her, Diego exclaimed, “She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen!”   He painted five oils, and she appears in two of his murals.

Asked about her painting, Rosa stated that she belonged to the neo-figurative school of painting. After a New York exhibition, a critic for Harper’s Bazaar wrote, “Rosa’s elegantly primitive style evokes high sophistication; her varied sensual arrangements of copper orchids, tiger lilies, pansies and butterflies, the chocolate-eyed children in festive holiday dress, the Mexican brides not unlike Gauguin’s South Sea models.” Juan Jose Arreola, a well-known Mexican writer/critic, reviewed an exhibition in Mexico; “In its radiant simplicity one finds the essential qualities of Mexican popular art; polychromatic earthenware, painted and repoussé tin ware, and the subtle and laborious craftsmanship of perforated paper. These are the elements in her painting which the artist has conceived and, in many, popular fervor and charm is accented with a single dramatic note." Rosa disliked the idea of exhibiting her work. “I paint for myself and for those who like my work and buy directly from me in my house. I paint to delight, to amuse. I capture a curve or a color that surprises the eye. I wish I could say I paint out of a deep yearning, or crazy passion, but I don’t. I paint for pleasure.” Not content with her artistic pursuits and the running of the house, Rosa took on the further responsibilities of marketing, cooking, entertaining, and gardening. Speaking of the garden, she chose the plants and herbs, often acquired on one of her trips, and did the planting herself. All this with skill and a taste for what was most pleasing. Throughout the house, there were always freshly cut flowers from the garden. As if this were not enough, Rosa also assumed the mantle of chauffeur and took care of all money matters. This included not only the household expenses, but also Miguel’s contracts and sales of paintings. Because of her outstanding management skills, Miguel was free to work unfettered by trivial, everyday obligations, and this allowed him to accomplish as much as he did. However, as time passed, Rosa and Miguel’s relationship began to change. He was more and more immersed in intellectual pursuits. He spent many hours preparing for and teaching classes which Rosa felt was wasting his time. She thought of Miguel as a great artist, thought highly of his work, admired his creativity, and wanted him to devote himself to his art. Furthermore, their living expenses had grown and the sale of his canvases would make life easier for them. She didn't comprehend that teaching was his manner of clarifying his ideas about his new endeavors in the fields of anthropology and archeology. Friends recalled that she could be very tough on him. There were numerous scenes where Rosa behaved like a shrew, spewing torrents of malicious words. Miguel avoided any kind of confrontation. He never lost his temper, a trait most exasperating to those who do. There were other aggravations. Rosa was drawn to names and social events whereas Miguel was no longer interested. When he became involved with China, she feared that his political stance would put a strain on the relationship with their rich, right wing connections. However, it was precisely these connections that were important for furthering her husband’s projects, and it was Rosa who obtained the money for them. One of these projects in the early fifties that caught Rosa’s attention was the archeological excavation at Palenque in Chiapas. She was instrumental in getting Nelson Rockefeller to finance this important project, and she herself spent three seasons working at the site with the archeologist, Dr. Alberto Ruz. In this same period, Miguel was appointed director of dance at the Instituto de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, where he set about to establish an academy of dance and a national ballet company. This was an ideal area where Rosa could once again collaborate, and she hoped it would bring them together again. Not only did she assist and advise Miguel on every aspect of the dance, but she also traveled with his dancers to Connecticut. In 1951, she designed costumes for “Huapango," a ballet created by Beatriz Flores, one of the dancers in the company. After that, she was asked to design costumes for Walter Hicks’s Afro-American dance company for a ballet to be performed at the opening of Mathias Goeritz’s experimental museum “El Echo ” in 1953. In spite of everything, the Covarrubias relationship continued to falter. Feeling she was losing her grip on Miguel, Rosa became more difficult and mean-spirited. For the most part, she stopped speaking Spanish, and became critical of Mexico. If someone annoyed her, she made offensive remarks. Worse still, if she thought another woman was making a pass at Miguel, she was capable of physically attacking her rival. Tener a Rosa como enemiga era espantosa porque era implacable. Six years older than Miguel, Rosa was no longer quite the beautiful woman he had married. All her life, she had been accustomed to being the center of attention. Friends and acquaintances, who had known her in the early days, spoke of the impact she made on entering a room. It was the confidence she projected, her alluring smile and her mesmerizing, deeply fringed eyes. One could only compare them to the Tiger’s Eye, an astonishing gemstone. They were honey-brown with scintillating yellow lines that that gave off a silky luster. As work continued at Bellas Artes, an impending scandal was the horizon. Miguel’s work in the area of dance sowed the seeds of the tragic ending of his love and seemingly ideal union with Rosa. He fell in love with a young dancer in the company, Rocío Sagaón. Although Rosa had had many a flirtation over the years, she could not tolerate Miguel’s infatuation with the dancer. Remembering those events, Sol Arguedes said, “Perdio su belleza y perdio todo.” As the relationship with the beautiful dancer, who seemed to be a reincarnation of Rosa as a young woman, became more serious, Rosa’s fury grew. Vulnerable and consumed by jealousy, she trailed Miguel all over the city. A passionate and elemental figure, she did not possess the power to control her feelings. Although Miguel’s life was with Rosa, his love was with Rocío. This was unacceptable. By making Miguel’s existence a true hell, Rosa ruined not only his life but also her own. Esperanza Gómez, a former dancer in Miguel’s company, explained Rosa’s behavior this way, "One must remember that Rosa was only fighting for what she felt was hers. She was a tragic figure, alone in a country where she now felt alienated and left on the sidelines." Without a doubt this dreadful state of affairs contributed to Miguel’s premature death following an operation for a bleeding ulcer. He died from septicemia on February 5th 1957 at the age of 53. This not only inflamed her anguish but also added to her grief. Overwhelmed and obsessed with her lost love, she passed the day crying. Her world was rapidly falling apart. After his death, Rosa dedicated much of her energy to administrating Miguel’s estate. She was scrupulously committed to protecting Miguel’s valuable pre-Hispanic collection, and placing it in a worthy institution. This became Rosa’s cause celébre. She insisted that his artwork be placed where it would be housed under the most advanced museum conservation practices. Although in need of money, she never sold a piece from their various collections nor a single one of his paintings. As time advanced, Rosa’s depression deepened. No longer able to drive, she felt isolated in Tizapán, but would not consider a move to town. She became more and more capricious, even perverse. She made promises of future gifts to friends so that they would pay attention to her, but changed her mind at any imagined affront. A person could fall out of favor from one day to the next over of an imagined affront. No one was allowed to forget the suffering she had gone through. At that time, Rosa was either loved or hated. She elicited strong emotions, as she herself remained passionately defiant. By not freeing herself of her obsession with Miguel’s betrayal, the remainder of Rosa’s life ultimately ended in disappointment. Still, she tried to rally. In 1958, Rosa applied for a grant to do research for a book she wanted to write on dance and sculpture in Bali, Java, and India, titled, “The Living Dead.” She needed to visit these countries to research and photograph the material for her book. Although the grant did not come through, Rosa did manage, with the help of the Rockefellers, to revisit Bali in 1968. Returning to Mexico, she became partners in a project with the writer/dramatist, Salvador Novo, who like Rosa was a gourmet and a chef. Together, they prepared gourmet luncheons for a select few at a banker’s gastronomic club, “La Capilla”, which was a great success with the patrons. They also worked on mass-market booklets of recipes. Back in 1947, Rosa had signed a contract to write a cookbook for the George Macy Company, publishers of the Limited Editions and Heritage Press publications. She never completed this project, as she had very little self-discipline and it was always difficult for Rosa to commit to work. The truth is she was lazy. In 1969, Heritage Press approached her once again to write a book on her favorite recipes. She was slowly gathering the material, when her health failed. Rosa was admitted to the Santa Elena Hospital in Mexico City in January 1970, where she remained for two months. On the 25th of March, Rosa Cowan Covarrubias died in her beloved house. Much to the surprise of her friends, she named Architect Luis Barragán executor of her will and heir to the entire estate. There was gossip and controversy over this decision. However, she felt indebted to Barragán who had taken care of all her bills and, furthermore, she had complete trust that he would follow her instructions in the will.

How shall we remember Rosa Covarrubias?  She was a woman for all seasons, a monumental personality ahead of her time. She helped define a moment in Mexican culture. Along with her Miguel, she was a significant member of that generation of Mexican artists that gave Mexican art international stature, making distinguished contributions in the fine arts, ethnology dance and popular art. 

For the greater part of Miguel’s life, she was his soul mate: inspirational, passionate, and worldly. Rosa Covarrubias was Miguel’s sensual and eternal flower, not unlike the beautiful woman whom Percy Bysshe Shelly described as, “Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.”

Bibliography

 “Tourneur to Produce Independently,” C.H. Bonte, Motion Picture World, April 13, 1918.

 Alfred A. Knopf, promotional advertisement of Island of Bali.

  Miguel Covarrubias dedication, Mexico South: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec,  New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1945.

 “Covarrubias Captures Mood of Mexico,” review of Mexico South by Miguel Covarrubias, New York Times

 María Asunolo interview with AW.  Mexico City 1985

 Harper’s Bazaar, review by George Christy., circa 1940s.

  “El Folklore Mexicano en la Exposición que Auspiciamos,” José Juan Arreola, Novedades, Mexico, D.F.

  Bertha Cuevas interview with Rosa Covarrubias. Novedades, Mexico City, Agosto, 1969.

 Sol Arguedas interview with AW, Mexico City, July 1992.

 Esperanza Gómez interview with AW,  Mexico City July 1991.
 Adonais.XLVI Percy Bysshe Shelley