Prints

The Lindy Hop

Type: Prints(Opens in new tab)
Date: 1936
Accession number: 2012.4
Maker: Miguel Covarrubias(Opens in new tab) (Mexican, 1904–1957)
Dimensions: 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm.) sheet: 17 × 12 1/2 in. (43.2 × 31.8 cm.)
Medium: lithograph
Credit: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Hannah S. and Russel I. Kully
Department: American Art
Find out more: View in the Art Museum catalog(Opens in new tab)

Label text

Miguel Covarrubias's The Lindy Hop conveys vibrant Harlem nightlife through its repeated pattern of sinuous dancers. Covarrubias came to the United States from Mexico in 1923 and became a caricaturist for Vanity Fair. He was introduced to the efflorescence of art, literature, music, and poetry coming out of Harlem in the 1920s and contributed illustrations to The New Negro, An Interpretation, the seminal text of the Harlem Renaissance. The Lindy Hop had been invented in Harlem during the 1920s and was particularly associated with African-American culture. The dance probably was named after Charles Lindbergh, who made the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.