Marius de Zayas

Greene was acquainted with the Mexican artist Marius de Zayas through Alfred Stieglitz and 291. The gallery mounted early exhibitions of his work, including Up and Down Fifth Avenue (1910), which featured large cardboard cutouts of his New York City caricatures. For his skeletal caricature of Greene, de Zayas may have drawn inspiration from the calaveras of Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada. She wrote about encountering de Zayas and a "wild bunch of men" (other modernist artists) in 1914.

BG to BB, 12/14/13 (253): "I rode aimlessly down Lipton Avenue until I saw the Holland House and suddenly decided to go in there and have a bit all by myself – At the door I was greeted by a wild bunch of men that we call the “Secessionists” here – Steiglitz & Marin & de Zayas & Havemeyer & Bliss Carman and they insisted that I have luncheon with them. They are so sincere in their outlandish “futurism” and other ism’s that one cannot help liking them – even though not one in the crowd had a clean collar or a shaven face – They took me over to their little attic room, later to see the latest outpairings of Picabia, Picasso and this little Marin – He really is a type – He looks more like something peering out of the jungle – something awaiting a lassoo [sic] than anything I ever saw – but whatever he is doing (and God knows I don’t know what it is) his whole life is in it – so perhaps something will come of it"