Two Brothers

Born in Oahu, Hawaii, to a Spanish-Cuban father and an American mother, Mabel Alvarez moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1909, where she completed high school and enrolled in the Art Students League. There, she met Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell, founding members of the Synchromism movement, who believed that form was best built through juxtaposition of colors. We see this in Alvarez's sensitive portrait of two Mexican brothers, Raul and Fernando, most noticeably in the folds of the siblings' shirts and their facial contours. An avid diarist, the artist recorded that the boys struggled to sit still, a fact perhaps reflected in their poses; the elder grounds himself with crossed limbs, while the younger perches on the arm of the couch.