Jiménez, Doña Luz, 1897-1965

Jean Charlot (1898–1979) and Luz Jiménez (1897–1965) each had an independent career: he as an artist and writer, and she as a model, informant, and author. They also had a long relationship that was important for the history of art and culture. They first met in late 1921 or early 1922, when Charlot was either twenty-three or twenty-four years old and Luz was a year older.[1] Luz became his model and visual inspiration. She also became his teacher of Náhuatl and Aztec culture, bringing him into her family in their village of Milpa Alta and taking him on their pilgrimage to Chalma. Eventually, Luz asked Charlot to be the godfather of her daughter Concha, which placed him in a compadre relation to the family, with important obligations for its spiritual and material welfare.[2] Charlot and Luz maintained that special connection throughout their lives, and their respective descendants remain close today.

The relationship of Charlot and Luz was, therefore, not the normal, unequal one between artist and model or researcher and informant. Luz was Charlot’s model but also his teacher. At times, Charlot employed her; at others, she and her family received him as a guest. Charlot was always aware of what he owed Luz: She’s been a great influence on my art. She’s been a great influence in introducing me to what I could call my ancestors, that is, the Aztec Indians, because I am part Indian.[3]

Beyond his own debt to Luz, Charlot was well aware of her broad cultural contribution, which is being increasingly recognized: [S]he was a person of importance in her Indian world, certainly, and this seeped out, I would say, to the other circles in Mexico, and she was considered like quite an important person. I think that when she died there was, by Anita Brenner, a sort of summary of her life in Mexico This Week [sic: Month] that suggests that she had put over that quality as a person that she had that was outstanding…She had certain things that were obviously important things, one of them the mastery of the Náhuatl language, so that she was considered by the ethnologists and archeologists as an important, we could say, "living link" with the Indian past. And as a person she was a grand person. That’s the only thing one can say.[4]

Luz most obviously transcended the role of artist’s model in her extensive work in language and culture: She spoke beautiful Aztec. In fact, later on, when she was older, she was what is called an informant on Aztec languages in the School of Ethnology.