1970

"La Bella Huri"

American (born Mexico), 1903 - 1975

Amézcua lived most of her life in Del Rio, Texas, and referred to her work as “Texas filigree art.” Without formal training, she produced complex, elaborately patterned drawings from her imagination, primarily using ball-point pens. Exotic subjects and motifs such as kings and queens, muses, and birds—especially peacocks—combine with poems and texts in startling compositions as fully decorated as Indian or Persian miniature paintings. The word huri in the inscription on this sheet apparently does not exist in Spanish or Italian, but the subject may be intended to be one of the beautiful virgins, known as houri, that were provided in paradise for all faithful Muslims.