In his teens he arrived to Mexico City to work as a domestic, but this allowed him to attend school, including painting classes.

His work has been recognized with various awards, publications, tributes and membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

[5] This forced his mother to leave San Andrés with her three youngest children, which included Hermenegildo, and live in the larger town of Apizaco, Tlaxcala, arriving when Sosa was eight.

[2][3] Economics and his family situation meant that he began and completed school late, but he maintained his determination to get an education, which in later life would allow him to support his mother and siblings.

[2][3] So a few weeks later, Sosa took a painting class at the Casa del Lago, an institution supported by the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

[9] By age 26, Sosa had completed high school and enrolled at La Esmeralda, studying from 1973 to 1978, when he earned his bachelor's degree in visual arts.

[9] His art studies allowed him to look at the landscapes around his hometown in a new light, the fields, farms, vegetation, and the colors of the different seasons, along with the sky both day and night.

In the 1980s, he and a group of students here at the time lobbied the administration to hold landscape painting workshops to be taught by Sosa.

[15] The work Poema was reproduced on a series of Mexican national lottery tickets in 1994, followed by Mis tres amores in 1995.

[2][15] His work has been critiqued and written about by the likes of Alí Chumancero and Berta Taracena,[19] and various books have been published such as El Color de la Vida presented at the Tlaxcala State Fair in 2007.

[16] Various organizations have held tributes to the artist including Tepecuicatl Concert Hall in the north of Mexico City (1996), José María Velasco Museum in Toluca (2010) and the Pinacoteca de Tlacala in 1988.

[15][20] Sosa was accepted into the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana and in the early 2000s he served as the board's president.

[21] In 2011 the city of Tlaxco inaugurated the Hermenegildo Sosa Cultural Center,[2] and in 2012 he received the Galardón San Benito Abad from the Universidad del Lago in Cuautitlán Izcalli.

[2][18] Influences include the works of Dr Atl, Francisco Goitia, José María Velasco, José Clemente Orozco, Joaquín Clausell, Rufino Tamayo, Luis Nishizawa, Vincent van Gogh, William Turner, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and Cezanne.

[2][30][31] According to Alí Chumacero: His main world, his achievement as an artist, is the composition of flowers, plants, mountains, volcanos and colors.