Claire Mullen in Literary Hub:
In Diego Rivera’s La creación, Nahui Olin sits among a gathering of figures that represent “the fable,” draped in gold and blue. She appears as the figure of Erotic Poetry, fitting for what she was known for at the time: her erotic writing and sexual freedom.
Olin—a painter, poet, and artists’ model—was known throughout the 1920s and 30s for her intense beauty; huge green eyes, golden hair, and an all-engulfing stare. But her image has been practically erased from the lore of that post-revolutionary time. Her piercing eyes aren’t recognizable unless one is familiar with her face, and the myth that surrounds it: of a woman who reveled in her own beauty, who painted portraits of herself with her many lovers, and who was eventually shunned by society and died, decades later, in the house that she grew up in, alone. Now, a new generation is revalorizing her story.
More here.