Standing male figurine,

600 BCE–200 CE

Xochipala figurines are renowned for their naturalism, expressiveness, and precise renditions of human anatomy, which has led to speculation that they are portraits of specific individuals. Unfortunately, few of the figurines were collected archaeologically, so almost nothing is known of their original context. They have long been collectively described as Xochipala-style after a modest modern town in Guerrero, Mexico, near where many figurines were found. Recent thermoluminescence dating confirms that the Xochipala figurines are contemporaneous with the Mezcala sculptures from the same region, on view nearby. Whereas Mezcala artists produced abstractions of the human form in stone, Xochipala figurines are naturalistic. Many of these works entered the art market over the course of about a decade, during the 1960s and into the early 1970s, when Museum curator Gillett Griffin was actively collecting ancient American art and interacting closely with dealers in both central Guerrero and New York.