Minerva Cuevas

Happy Birthday Minerva Cuevas!

Conceptual artist Minerva Cuevas was born in Mexico City in 1975. She received her art training at the National School of Plastic Arts. Involved in political and social causes, Cuevas founded the Mejor Vida Corp., an organization that seeks to aid individuals and families who are struggling financially.

Her art involves multisensory installations, productions promoting social and economic change. She has received awards and her work is held in various collections across the world. She resides and works in Mexico City.

Luis Arenal Bastar

Happy Birthday Luis Arenal Bastar!

The Mexican painter, engraver and sculptor, Luis Arenal Bastar, was born in Teapa in Southern Mexico, in 1908 or '09.  He attended parochial school, later studying mechanical engineering. In 1924 he immigrated to the US where he studied architecture. Arenal returned to Mexico and, man of many talents, then studied law and sculpture at Escuela Nacional des Artes Plasticas. He was a founding member of several organizations including Liga de Escritores Y Artistas Revolucionares.

He was a politically active Communist and at one time fled to the US for a time, after an incident at León Trotsky's home. He contributed propaganda to magazines and publications. Arenal painted many murals throughout Mexico and created a couple of sculptures to compliment David Sisquieros' mural at Centro de Arte Moderno in Mexico City.

His last major project was a collaborative mural with Lorenzo Carrasco (architect), titled Cabeza de Juarez, in Iztapalapa. The monument weighed three tons and is thirteen meters high. Arenal and his team finished the project after David Sisquieros, who was supposed to paint it, passed away before it could be completed. Today it has been converted to a museum.

Monica Mayer

Happy Birthday Monica Mayer!

Born in 1954 in Mexico City, Monica Mayer initially trained at Escuela Nacional des Artes Plasticas and then went on to study in the US at Goddard College and earned a master's degree in Sociology of Art. She co-founded the first feminist art collective in Mexico with Maris Bustamante: Polvo de Gallina Negra (Black Hen Powder). The name signified "protection from patriarchal magic which strives to make women disappear".

Mayer is a very diverse artist, her talents include drawing, photography, performance and conceptual art, digital graphics, curator, art critic and theorist among other endeavors. She wrote a column for Mexican newspaper El Universal for 20 years. In 1989 in collaboration with Victor Lerma, she created an ongoing conceptual piece of newspaper articles on contemporary Mexican art topics titled Pinto mi Raya ( literal translation...I Paint my Line). This project is an attempt to "stimulate the art system in Mexico" with workshops, performances, exhibits, in addition to the archived articles.

Another conceptual piece, "El Tendedero" is a clothesline with ballots posted allowing the spectator to take a look at and comment on various issues dealing with social, feminist and cultural concerns. An example of the posts is: "As a woman, what I hate most about my city is..." It was first displayed in Mexico in 1977 and has continued in the US. The ever changing exhibit is shown below.

Cleofas Almanza

Happy Birthday Cleofas Almanza!

The Mexican painter, Cleofas Almanza was born in 1850. Biographical information about this artist is scarce. We do know he was a landscape painter whose work has been sold through Christies and other auction houses. The landscape displayed below was painted in 1890. I really love the play of light in this painting with deep shadows and beautifully lit cliffs. In English the title translates to: "Landscape with Forest River".

Paisaje Boscoso con Rio

Juan de Mata Pacheco

Happy Birthday Juan de Mata Pacheco!

Painter Juan de Mata Pacheco was born in Aguascalientes on February 8, 1874. He began his art schooling at age 21 at the Academy of Fine Arts in San Carlos. He taught for a time and then studied painting in Europe, exhibiting in Madrid and Paris. While in Paris Pacheco studied art restoration with master Henrri Boissonas. He returned to Mexico to become curator of Galleries of Painting and Sculpture of Fine Arts. He was most interested and dedicated his life's work to restoration and preserving the history of Mexican art. Perhaps his most famous project was the reproduction of Juan Cordero's Triumph of Science and Industry Over Ignorance and Sloth, after it was ordered destroyed by then president Porfirio Diaz, who felt it threatened his oligarchy. (see May 14)

Most of his work hangs in the 19th Century Hall of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, but the Cordero reproduction along with two landscapes are exhibited in Mexico City at the National Museum of Art. Pacheco was killed in a car accident in 1956.

Juan Rulfo

Happy Birthday Juan Rulfo!

May 16, 1917, was the birth date for Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Perez Rulfo Vizcaino, better known as simply Juan Rulfo. He was a writer, screenwriter and photographer. He was born in Alpulco, Jalisco and raised by his grandmother after both of his parents died while he was still young. He originally planned to study law at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, but ended up studying literature and began writing instead. He did write several books, articles and lectures, his masterpiece being "One Hundred Years of Solitude"  but we are looking at art so I am including the photograph called "Oaxacan Farmers"  below. Many of his photographs were published in a book with Carlos Fuentes' (among others) essays, titled Juan Rulfo's Mexico.

Juan Cordero

Happy Birthday Juan Cordero!

This Classical painter and muralist was born in Teziutlan, on (tomorrow) May 16, 1822. He has the longest name of any artist I've written about thus far: Juan Nepomuceno Maria Bernabe del Corazon de Jesus Cordero de Hoyos! He initially studied at San Carlos Academy before traveling to Rome to attend Accademia di San Luca. There he was influenced by the Nazarene movement**and returned to Mexico to show his finished canvases.

Cordero feuded with his former teacher Pelegrí Clave over the directorship of the Academy but when Clave was retained he resorted to traveling Mexico painting portraits. Later Cordero began painting murals and in 1874 he was hired to paint a mural at the National Prepratory School (which would later become the hub of the muralist movement). The mural is said to be the first secular themed philosophical mural: The Triumph of Science and Industry Over Ignorance and Sloth. It was an attempt to encourage students to bring the scientific methodology of Benjamin Franklin to Mexico. Later the mural met resistance from (president) Porfirio Diaz who saw it as a threat to his oligarchy and was subsequently destroyed. Cordero was ostracized and for the rest of his life; although he continued to paint he was not able to exhibit his work. Today we are left with a copy of the controversial mural by Juan de Mata Pacheco, which I am including today.

**Nazarene Movement- Group of German Romanticists who desired to bring back honesty and spirituality in Christian art.