Alfonso Arana

Alfonso Meléndez Arana (March 31, 1927–November 18, 2005) was a painter of Mexican and Puerto Rican ancestry who was born in New York City.

As a young man, Arana studied art in Mexico at the Atelier de Jose Bardasano, at the Manhattan School of Arts in New York, the Académie Julian and L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Paris, and did post graduate work at the American University in Washington, D.C.[1] Arana was born in New York City on March 31, 1927 to a Mexican father and a Puerto Rican mother.

Arana studied art in Mexico at the Atelier de Jose Bardasano, at the Manhattan School of Arts in New York, the Académie Julian and L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Paris, and did post graduate work at the American University in Washington, D.C. Arana became known for his style of almond-shaped, hollow yet expressive eyes in a face without a skull and with a slightly oversized body.

The artist once explained that his alive and expressive human figures do not have any skulls because "they are receptacles of the active things in the world as is God, nature, life, whatever we want."

[4] Arana suffered Parkinson's disease for quite a few years and died of associated complications on November 18, 2005 in his house in Paris in the company of his wife Simone Christophe, and daughter Rosa Meléndez Ibarra.