Doris Heyden

Who was Doris Heyden?

Doris Heyden was a prominent scholar of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, particularly those of central Mexico. She was born in East Orange, New Jersey, United States. She died on September 25, 2005 from the lingering after effects of a stroke suffered in 1999.

Heyden was a member of a group of artists, writers, folklorists, scholars, and political activists who together created the "Mexican Renaissance". The exponents of this post-Revolutionary circle drew upon Mexican history and traditions while contributing to a variety of international movements including realism, Symbolism, surrealism and communism. Important members were mural painters Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, Zapotec painter Rufino Tamayo, mystical painters Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington, caricaturist and Mesoamerican scholar Miguel Covarrubias, as well as photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo.