Leap of Freedom

To welcome in a particularly grey July, I flipped my calendar page to this glorious and surreal paean to summer, by the artist Miguel Covarrubias. The issue is titled London in Summer, from August 1937. I love the tiny figure of a man in evening dress being buried in sand, and who doesn’t love the idea of leaping over a giant seashell – dressed in a sequinned silver swimsuit, no less – on such a sunny day?

Miguel Covarrubias (1904–1957) was a Mexican painter and caricaturist that I have not actually heard of before now. He moved to New York at the tender age of 19 where he found success, with his artwork and celebrity caricatures being featured in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.

Happy July, whichever hemisphere you spend it in.