Manuel Felguerez Barra

 

Manuel Felguerez Barra (1928 –2020) was a Mexican abstract artist, part of the Generación de la Ruptura that broke with the muralist movement of Diego Rivera and others in the mid 20th century.Manuel Felguérez - artist whose works are still being displayed across Mexico. One of the most important members of the Generación de la Ruptura, Felguérez was honored with the prestigious Premio Nacional de Artes in 1988. A multi-talented person, Felguérez was also a sculptor and teacher; he worked as a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.Felguérez was born in Zacatecas in 1928, but political instability caused his family to lose their land there and move to Mexico City. In 1947, he had the chance to travel to Europe and impressed with the art there, decided to dedicate himself to the vocation. Unhappy with the education at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico, he did most of his studies in France, where he specialized in abstract art, something that was not accepted in Mexico at the time. His exhibitions were initially limited to galleries and the production of "sculpted murals" using materials such as scrap metals, stones and sand. As attitudes in Mexico changed towards art, Felguérez found acceptance for his work and remains active at over eighty years of age.

Arturo Rivera

 

 Arturo Rivera (1945 –2020) was a Mexican painter based in Mexico City. He lived for eight years in New York City where he worked as a kitchen helper, construction worker and as a worker in a paint factory to support his painting. In 1979, artist Max Zimmerman saw Rivera's work at the Latin American Institute on Madison Street and invited him to Munich as an assistant teacher at the Kunstakademie. After a year of intensive work and studies he returned to Mexico. In 1982 his work was featured in a solo exhibition at the Museo de Arte Moderno.He exposes through his art the horrors of the world, of nature, of dreams and imagination as well as painting portraits, self portraits, characters, landscapes, and objects of classic beauty into his intricate compositions. His main materials are acrylic, watercolor, caseine, graphite, compte crayons, oil pastels, egg tempera, and creta paint.His work has been exhibited throughout Mexico and abroad (Francis Gallery NYC, Jack Gallery SoHo NYC, Walton Galley of Chicago, Haus der Kunst of Munich, etc.).Arturo Rivera died October 2020.

 

Gilberto Aceves Navarro - Figurative Expressionism Painting

Gilberto Aceves Navarro ( 1931 – 2019) was a Mexican painter and sculptor and a professor at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas and Academy of San Carlos. There have been more than two hundred individual exhibits of his work, with his murals found in Mexico, Japan and the United States. He received numerous awards for his work including grants as a Creador Artístico of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes and Bellas Artes Medal from the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes.
Aceves Navarro never retired, even into his eighties, because he loved to paint. He liked to see how colors and forms take shape.He considered art not a simple pleasant vocation but rather a need and a kind of mental exercise.He created murals, oils, drawings, monumental sculpture, theater and poetry.He said that drawing was fundamental to his life, and preferred to work alone in his studio.Wikipedia

 

Rodolfo Nieto Labastida - Mexican Modern Painting

Rodolfo Nieto Labastida (July 13, 1936 in Oaxaca – June 24, 1985 in Mexico City) was a Mexican painter of the Oaxacan School (apprenticed under Diego Rivera, later served him as an assistant).
Fernando Gamboa stated that noise and melody, the human figure and graphic line, expression and invention, reality and fiction are all interwoven in Nieto's canvases: he was part of the Generación de la Ruptura and has been related to the School of Oaxaca, with works based on the myths and legends of the state. Nieto worked in diverse techniques such as pencil, pastel and oil to mixed media and graphics. His work is semi-abstract in the realm of magical realism. While his time in Europe was important for the development of his visual language, it remained based on the colors and images of his native state. After he returned to Mexico, he studied pre Hispanic and popular art which caused him to simplify forms.However, his most popular paintings are of Toros, or Bulls. At auction, these pieces sell in the mid-six figure range.Often asked if he was an abstract painter. Nieto always defended himself from that idea, and did not understand how people could be confused, as he had never stopped doing figuration, but certainly not realistic. He told to his brother Carlos between laughs: "If I did abstract painting and would like to send a message, I'd better to have written a novel.Wikipedia