Portrait of a Young Painter

"Portrait of a Young Painter is one of the most original and engaging books I have read in a long time. It is dazzling in its layers of perception, its textures, and its intimate insights. It is genuinely original in both argument and methodology, a remarkable work and a pleasure to read." - Barbara Weinstein, author of The Color of Modernity: Sao Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil

"Portrait of a Young Painter is a major contribution to understanding Mexico City's student rebellion of 1968 and contemporary Mexican history. Mary Kay Vaughan follows the personal evolution of painter José 'Pepe' Zúñiga as he engaged with mid-twentieth-century Mexico City's public culture. She masterfully connects the experiences of movies, radio, music, and other media with the evolution of his self. Her approach, historicizing subjectivity, not only gives her important new perspectives on the events of 1968, but also transcends cultural history and opens new paths of historical analysis."
- Pablo Piccato, author of The Tyranny of Opinion: Honor in the Construction of the Mexican Public Sphere

"The last several years have revealed the start of a remarkable ferment among historians of postrevolutionary, and especially of post-1945, Mexico....Mary Kay Vaughan’s beautifully written, masterful new book, Portrait of a Young Painter, is situated precisely at the interstices of this historiographical revisionism." - Eric Zolov, Hispanic American Historical Review

"Mary Kay Vaughan’s Portrait of a Young Painter is an extraordinary contribution to the literature on the Latin American sixties.... It will be mandatory reading on the sixties, an era of transforming subjectivities worldwide." - Valeria Manzano, American Historical Review

"Scholars will gain much from reading this smartly written, imaginative study. Skillfully revealing the complex, multilayered worlds that Zúñiga inhabited, Vaughan opens the door to a greater understanding of Mexico's 1960s youth rebellion. This powerful analysis will contribute significantly to the field, but also should point to new ways of writing history." - Stephanie J. Smith, The Americas

"Vaughan’s book suggests that the roots of political resistance in Mexico can be profitably explored at the level of individual subjectivity, and her work should influence future scholarship by Mexicanists and historians of youth movements in Latin America and beyond." - Rachel Grace Newman, Journal of Latin American Studies

"Mary Kay Vaughan’s biography of Mexican painter Pepe Zúñiga is a labor of love and friendship." - Robert M. Buffington, EIAL

“Vaughan writes a lively, inspired, and extremely detailed cultural history of Mexico City’s urban culture between 1940 and 1970. . . . She writes with empathy, intelligence, and humor.” - Rubén Gallo, Latin American Research Review