Olga Costa

In her elective home country of Mexico, the artist Olga Costa (1913–1993), a native of Leipzig, has long been established as an important female voice of Mexican Modernism. This volume presents impressively her autonomous artistic work between Mexican and European Modernism, and follows the traces of her life from Germany out into the world and back again.

As the daughter of a Jewish-Ukrainian musician, the autodidact Olga Costa emigrated to Mexico in the 1920s, where she explored her new surroundings in her painting. Throughout her life she was not only inspired by people’s everyday lives and the intensive colours of the landscape, but also by the dialogue with other artistic positions. It was not least Costa’s examination of questions of cultural identity and feminism as well as her broad cultural-political commitment that made her one of the most important women artists in the circle surrounding Frida Kahlo.