Portraits by Mexican Artists
Mexican Portraits Sampler
(1918-1991). Born in Mexico City, Emilio Baz Viaud is painter little known, even in Mexico, whose work has only just started to be evaluated by experts. He studied architecture but was always interested in painting, and was a pupil of the artist Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, who guided him along the path to his real vocation as an artist. He did not give an individual exhibition until 1951, although he was featured in several collective exhibitions together with such eminent artists as Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. His meticulous technique in "trompe-l'oeil" style, achieved by applying oil paints to a dry surface, was praised by his colleagues and critics of the day, who unanimously compared his verism with the brushwork, to that of the great Renaissance masters such as Dürer and Boticelli. In the seventies he went through a period of abstract painting, but he is mainly known for his work done before 1955. (Bio. from the Andres Blastein Museum).
(1905-1982). Early in life, O’Gorman was exposed to drawing and composition through his father, Cecil Crawford O’Gorman, a well-known Irish painter who settled in Mexico. Despite this influence, he chose to focus on architecture early in his career. After graduating in 1927 from the school of architecture of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, O’Gorman began designing spare, rectilinear houses and buildings in the style of the Functionalist architect Le Corbusier. Included among these designs were, in 1928, the house and studio of the muralist Diego Rivera, a close associate.
O’Gorman worked as chief draftsman for Carlos Santacilia and other architects in Mexico City until 1932, at which time he became head of the Department of Building Construction for Mexico City and professor of architecture at the National Polytechnic Institute. He founded a study group for workers’ housing and was responsible for the Functionalist design and construction of about 30 schools.
In the mid-1930s O’Gorman began to focus on painting, typically creating historical and nationalistic narratives in both easel paintings and murals. His major works in Mexico City included murals at the Mexico City airport (1937–38), which were removed in 1939 because of their anticlerical and antifascist character.
O’Gorman returned to architecture in the 1950s, adopting a more organic approach. The most elaborate example of his work is the exterior of the Library of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, which he planned and built in the early 1950s. The windowless library featured a tower containing book stacks; the tower was covered with natural-stone mosaics, which symbolically depicted a history of Mexican culture. He also created notable mosaics for the Secretariat of Communications and Public Works (1952) and the Posada de la Misión Hotel in Taxco (1955–56).
O’Gorman’s own house outside Mexico City (1953–56, demolished 1969) was considered his most extraordinary work. It was in part a natural cave and was designed to harmonize with the lava formations of the landscape. Decorated with mosaic symbols and images from Aztec mythology, it marked his eventual rejection of Functionalism in favour of an approach that united modern structural designs with indigenous Mexican decorative motifs. He also continued to paint, and in the 1960s and ’70s he executed a number of murals at theNational Museum of History in Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City. (Bio. from Britannica).
(1926 - ). Born in Mexico City, near the Zocalo. The cultural and political environment fascinated the youthful Bustos, as he is called by friends and family, and influenced greatly his artistic development. In 1941, when he was barely 15, he entered the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas and the following year entered the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura ("La Esmeralada") where his teachers were Frida Kahlo, Felician Pena, Agustin Lazo and Maria Izquierdo.
The year 1945 was decisive. He was one of the four students who followed Frida Kahlo to Coyoacan (these students became know as "los Fridos"), he entered the Taller Grafica Popular (TGP) and he participated in the founding of the group "Artistas Jóvenes Revolucionarios." Starting in 1945, he had a close relations with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Rina Lazo, who was an assistant of Diego Rivera, has been his partner and wife for over 60 years. With her, he shares the "Casa de la Malinche" where they both paint and create engravings.
In 1952 the "Frente Nacional de Artes Plásticas" was founded, pronouncing that this group of artists would be the representative of the workers in the arts in Mexico. In 1953, he came to Guatemala with his artist wife Rina, a Guatemalan by birth, where he gave an important workshop on engraving. These works are still exhibited in Guatemala.
His four main themes in these lithographs are 1) Scenes of rural Mexican Life; 2) the fight of different towns for liberation; 3) the campaign in favor of disarmament and peace and 4) portraits of people.
Today, Arturo García Bustos is recognized as one of the greatest Mexican lithographers and as one of the best Mexican painters and muralists. His murals can be seen in the Oaxaca room of the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico, the metro station at the UNAM, the stairways of the Municipal Palace in Oaxaca, to mention only a few. In June 1999, Rina and Bustos conducted a masters class in Italy teaching the art of the mural where they painted a mural. Without doubt, the aspect most relevant of his powerful work is his ability to show the social realism around him. His works center around social and political criticism and constitute a cry of protest against injustice and a constant fight for peace.
Garcia Bustos' hundreds of works have been exhibited in Argentina, Austria, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, the United States. In the 1950s, he was not allowed to enter the United States because of his political beliefs. Today, he participates in important exhibitions of his works in that country.
He has been a member of the World Peace Council, the Mexican Plastic Arts Hall and the Mexican Academy of Arts, among other organizations.
On March 29, 2005, a collection consisting of eleven of his paintings was exhibited at the Museo Mural Diego Rivera of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, in Mexico City.
He is currently working on a new mural. (Bio. from Wikipedia).
Pelegrín Clavé
The National Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City.
General López de Santa Anna, the longtime strongman of Mexico, favoured Europeans when he reopened the National Academy of San Carlos in 1843, acquiring from Spain and Italy a distinguished but conservative faculty that propagated Realism. (Ironically, many postindependence leaders looked down upon native Latin American artists and preferred to award commissions and give teaching positions to Europeans.) Pelegrín Clavé, a Catalan painter who had learned his art in Rome from the Nazarene painters, was the head of the revived academy. He painted some landscapes, but his most arresting subjects were the intellectual elite of Mexico City. He spent more than 20 years teaching and directing at the Academia, influencing many painters of his time.