This is one of Zeno’s earliest works, and was created while she was studying under the Spanish artist Eugenio F. Granell, at the University of Puerto Rico. Having fought against Franco’s forces in the Spanish Civil War, Granell spent eleven years of exile in Latin America and the Caribbean before settling in Puerto Rico in January, 1950. Invited by the University rector, Jaime Benítez, Granell served as the arts professor at The University of Puerto Rico (1950-59), where he imparted his surrealist vision to the most audacious students in the department. Zeno was Granell’s most outstanding pupil, and made proto-feminist, biomorphic abstractions that clashed with the conservative academicism taught at the university during the early 1950’s.

This oil study relates to one of the artist’s best-known compositions, Ni Hablar del Peluquín (No Use to Talk about the Little Wig...), which teased the vanity of the sitter by drawing attention to his hairpiece.