Alfredo Guati Rojo

Alfredo Guati Rojo Cárdenas (December 1, 1918 – June 10, 2003) was a 20th-century Mexican artist who worked to restore the reputation of watercolor painting as a true art form.

During this time, Guati Rojo also had a career showing and selling his own artwork, almost exclusively watercolors, in various parts of the world.

He spent his childhood listening to the stories of his paternal grandfather and traveling much of Mexico as his father was a criminal lawyer.

[1][2] At age 16, he left Cuernavaca for Mexico City to study at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, living at his grandfather's house.

[2] That same year, he was awarded the “Águila Azteca” (Aztec Eagle) for his cultural work in Central and South America along with Ignacio Beteta .

[1][2] The marriage lasted sixty four years, with her working with him on projects, most notably the running and promotion of the National Watercolor Museum after it was founded.

This along with impending blindness due to disease made Guati Rojo depress and he died only a few weeks later on June 10, 2003.

The shows at the institute began to have success and favorable reviews, leading watercolor artists in the city to sell their work.

[2] In 1955, part of the institute became the site of the first Salón Nacional de Acuarela (National Exhibition of Watercolors), an annual event which continues to the present.

[1][2] About a decade later, he founded the Sociedad Mexicana de Acuarelistas in 1964 along with Gustavo Alanís, Edgardo Coghlan, Manual Arrieta, Jesús Ochoa and Teresa Miranda.

[8] From the time he graduated from college, he had gathered a large collection of watercolors, starting with those of her former teachers and his past and present students.

This collection became the base of Museo Nacional de la Acuarela or National Watercolor Museum, the first of its kind in the world in 1967.

[1][7] The watercolor museum continued to operate in the building in Colonia Roma until the 1985 Mexico City earthquake destroyed it.

However, the loss of the building prompted the government to purchase the museum's current site at Salvador Novo 88 in the Coyoacán borough, an expensive section of the city.

His first exhibit was in 1947, and since then his work was shown individually and collectively in many countries of the world including Austria, Belgium, Spain, Italy, France, Great Britain, Japan, the United States, New Zealand, Indonesia, Brazil, Singapore, Colombia, Canada and Venezuela as well as in many parts of Mexico.

Large oil paintings came to be seen as the only true art, with the small size of watercolor and their transparency thought of as insignificant.

[3] Guati Rojo also considered watercolor essential to Aztec civilization as the codices were written with water-based paints on amate paper.

The meaning of this work is to explain the act of creating theater in one's life in order to bring attention to certain subject.