Of indigenous descent and born in the Mexican state of Jalisco, Jesús Guerrero Galván demonstrated significant artistic talent as a young boy, leading him to become a prominent member of the Mexican Mural Movement. Although most famous for his murals in both Mexico and the United States, Guerrero Galván is also recognized for his extraordinary canvas paintings, often depicting women and children as his subjects. His figures, such as the woman in the present lot, are classically rendered, as the artist was influenced both by Renaissance painting and Picasso’s sculptural nudes of the 1920s. Here, the woman is clearly a Mexican peasant but Guerrero Galván dignifies her and features her as a Renaissance painter would a saint, clothing her in a white rebozo, which she modestly uses to cover her head, and giving her a dark, mestizo, skin color. In the background, we see evidence of the Mexican Revolution, which ripped apart the country from 1910 to 1920, represented by the fallen campesinos dressed in their typical white cotton garb. This vignette signifies that the main figure is not only a campesina, but also a soldadera, a female soldier who fought alongside men during the Revolution. Guerrero Galván stays true to his classical artistic training, while simultaneously manipulating his technique to produce a work that is inherently Mexican and closely related to his contemporary muralists, such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.