Alfredo Zalce

Born in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán in 1908, as an infant he lived in Tacubaya during the Mexican Revolution; his school was near where the rival forces of Victoriano Huerta and Emiliano Zapata met in battle.

[5] According to a friend and prominent collector of his works, the young Alfredo began to draw aged six or seven, but chose to do so upon the linoleum floor of his home; nevertheless both his parents praised him.

[5] Between 1924 and 1927 he studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Mexico City, where formative influences included Mateo Saldaña, Germán Gedovius and Diego Rivera.

[3] He was soon on friendly terms with Diego Rivera as well as Rufino Tamayo, David Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco and Frida Kahlo.

[4] As the oldest of three children, he took responsibility for the family after the death of his father; while a student, he studied in the mornings and worked in the afternoons so as to be able to provide financial support.

[4] He first went to Zacatecas to teach art but, since the Cristero War had ended only shortly before, the school was not permitted to operate owing to lingering political tensions.

[3] He was also a founder of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios in 1933; one of its first missions was to oppose the favourable attitude at the time of many in Mexico towards Adolf Hitler.

[6] In 1946 he illustrated a volume of drama and verse by Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, making it "one of the most Mexican and most beautiful books of the year".

[7] He also contributed woodcuts to Cantos Indígenos de México, a selection of indigenous Mexican songs including those of the Nahua and a Yaqui deer dance, compiled by folklorist Concha Michel.

[5] Zalce was active in oil, acrylic, watercolour, pastel, ink, pencil, engraving, monotyping, serigraphy, batik, bronze, stone, ceramics, precious metals and more.

[1][2] He was a prominent exponent of figurativism and expressionism, popular in Mexico from the 1920s, and his work is typically characterized by its "precision and clarity"; his scenes of everyday life and of the common man are steeped in social criticism.