MarĂa del Carmen MondragĂłn Valseca, also known as Nahui Olin (b. Tacubaya, today Mexico City, July 8, 1893 â d. Mexico City, January 23, 1978) was a Mexican artistâs model, painter and poet.
Carmen MondragĂłn was the fifth of eight children of General Manuel MondragĂłn, Secretario de Guerra y Marina in 1913 and inventor of the MondragĂłn rifle. Her mother was Mercedes Valseca. Carmen MondragĂłn received a privileged education in Mexico, and afterwards from 1897 to 1905 in France, learning to speak French fluently. The professional activities of General MondragĂłn, who specialized in artillery design, led the family to Spain in 1905, where she met cadet Manuel RodrĂguez Lozano, whom she married on August 6, 1913. Although General MondragĂłn went into exile to Belgium after the occurrences of the Decena TrĂĄgica, Carmen MondragĂłn moved to Paris with her husband, where they met Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Jean Cocteau. Afterwards they moved to San SebastiĂĄn, Spain, where Carmenâs brother Manuel ran a photo studio. In San SebastiĂĄn, both started painting.
In 1921 both returned to Mexico, where they went separate ways. Whether they were ever divorced is unknown. Carmen MondragĂłn turned towards the artistsâ scene of Mexico City, got contacts with JosĂŠ Vasconcelos and Xavier Villaurrutia, and was interested in the Teatro Ulises movement. She had multiple sexual affairs. Her beauty is described as mesmerizing and erotic, and she was apparently the first woman in Catholic Mexico who wore a miniskirt. She became model of several notable painters and photographers, among others posing for some of Diego Riveraâs murals, for Tina Modotti, Antonio GarduĂąo, Roberto Montenegro, MatĂas Santoyo, Edward Weston and in 1928 for IgnĂĄcio Rosas at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes.[3] Especially her nudes became famous. When a former French teacher of her recognized her pictures, he published A dix ans sur mon pupitre (From my desk, at 10 years old), a book of 1924, which describes the 10-year-old pupil Carmen MondragĂłn within his teacherâs sight. Carmen MondragĂłn had an intense love relationship with Gerald Murillo, also known as Dr Atl, who named her âNahui Olinâ, a symbol of Aztec renewal meaning âfour movementâ, the symbol of earthquakes. They lived together in the former La Merced Cloister. At this time she wrote her poems Ăptica cerebral, poemas dinĂĄmicos (1922) and Calinement je suis dedans (1923), finished several naĂŻve paintings, and composed. As intensely as the love relationship began, it ended equally quickly in the mid-1920s. Later she denied it completely. After having several further affairs, she stepped out of public life in the 1940s.
Carmen MondragĂłn is considered one of the talented and revolutionary women who formed the 1920s and 1930s in Mexico by activism and creativity, like Guadalupe MarĂn, Antonieta Rivas Mercado, Tina Modotti, Lupe VĂŠlez and MarĂa Izquierdo. Her popularity was due more to her beauty than to her artistic and literary work. She herself described her work as intuitive. All her self-portraits show oversized, green eyes, but her eyes seem highlighted also in paintings by other artists. Many of her works are undated.
Her works were exhibited in the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago in 2007, in an exhibition titled A Woman Beyond Time/Nahui Olin: una mujer fuera del tiempo.
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