B. 1901-1976 - Emilio Amero participated in the first wave of muralist, starting as an assistant to José Clemente Orozco at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, and then working alongside Carlos Mérida at the Secretaría de Educación Pública. With Vasconcelos’ resignation as Minister of Education in 1924, Amero left Mexico for Havana and then New York, where he remained until 1930.

Amero probably painted "Reclining Female Nude" after his return to Mexico City, and while the color palette and terracotta tiles evoke Mexico, the geometric massing of the figure suggests that Amero was experimenting with the simplified, yet classicized manner of interwar modernism. The contours also suggest that while in New York, he maintained a stylistic dialogue with his close friend and collaborator Jean Charlot. Yet unlike Charlot, who tended to particularize his portraits and figure drawings by referencing Mexico’s folk art and traditions, Amero’s nude is less culturally specific and more openly eroticized. It stands in dialogue as much with Modigliani as with the classicism of Picasso, as well as with Mexican models, like Tamayo’s "Red Nude". .

Amero’s interest in the female nude as a site for modernist expression is evident from the fact that when his work was twice featured in the vanguard journal Contemporáneos, among the illustrations were two lithographs of nudes and another nude shown in a photomontage. In recent years, Amero’s remarkable talent as a photographer and filmmaker has excited great interest. Though rendered in a more traditional medium, the straight-forward simplicity of this nude attests to Amero’s interest in expressive, abstract form.