The famous Mexican model, painter, and poet Nahui Olin was born Carmen Mondragón on July 8, 1893, amid continuing aftershocks of the Mexican Revolution and the cultural crisis that coincided. While the woman that she and others immortalized in photography and paintings would later be called erotic, sensuous, revolutionary and nonconformist, she was already rebellious and highly inquisitive as a child. Her education in France spanning 8 years fed her keen and intelligent mind. Her beauty even in her infancy and adolescence also captured much attention – those unmistakable piercing green eyes became the symbol of her mystique even as a girl. Those eyes would continue to inspire painters and photographers many years later. ....Shorty separating from her husband, Carmen met the painter Dr. Atl at a party. Originally named Gerardo Murillo, the artist took the name from Nahuatl origins and christened Carmen with her new name of Nahui Olin, an Aztec name having to do with the sun’s force behind the cyclic rhythm of the heavens. Immediately after their encounter, Dr. Atl and Carmen fell into an ardent, all-consuming love affair that continually broke societal norms. He was 20 years older than her.... ...While Olin surrounded herself with prolific painters, she maintained her own distinct style of painting. Her style is sometimes called naïf painting, for its wide brushstrokes, vivid colors, and depictions of typical Mexican community life. But like Frida Kahlo, self-portraiture was an essential means for Olin to investigate and cement her identity. This perhaps was her way of solidifying a life that in many other respects was disintegrating.... painting was a way for Olin to anchor the external world to herself: like Frida’s one eyebrow, Nahui would superimpose her enormous eyes onto her subjects. As Nahui Olin aged, she spent more time immersed in her fantasies and seemed to observers to be losing her mind... http://faculty.hope.edu/andre/artistPages/olin_bio.html undefined

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