When he visited his aunt Esther, he spent long hours watching her paint while the other children ran in the garden.

[2][4] In 1919, he moved to Mexico City with his family, where he began drawing lessons with a painter named Francisco Zeteno.

[2][5] During his school years, his principle teachers included Mateo Herrera and Francisco Díaz de León, working in various media such as fresco, oil on fabric, vinylite, ship paint, tempera, mosaics and ceramics.

During his stay in Veracruz to paint a mural, he became involved in an effort in 1953 to save and restore the then crumbling San Juan de Ulúa fort, which was set to be destroyed to build new warehouses and a dock.

His will stated they should be distribute among family members but this was challenged on court by critic Antonio Luna Arroyo, who even involved UNAM over the disposition of twenty two paintings.

[2] González Camarena began his career working as an assistant to Dr. Atl, coloring the images of church in the book Las iglesias de México.

[1][4][7] In 1933, painter Jorge Enciso, then director of the Dirección de Monumentos Coloniales, commissioned him to restore the 16th-century frescos on the walls of the former monastery of Huejotzingo, Puebla.

[3] INBA also proposed that González Camarena replace the work with a mural at the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

[4][7] Other of González Camarena's early murals include Águila en Vuelo for the Banco de México building in Veracruz and the La Purísma Church.

[3] In 1954, the founder of the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Studies, Eugenio Garza Sada, commissioned González Camarena to create a mural for what is now the main administration building for the university system.

This project had him spent much time in Monterrey, and become involved in the artist community there, leading to the creation of the Arte, A.C. cultural group.

[2] In 1959 Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta commissioned him to decorate the facade of Televicentro, today Televisa, resulting in a 900 m2 mural called Frisos de la television.

[2][4] In 1965, he was commissioned by the Mexican government to create a mural for the city of Concepción, Chile, even though the project was threatened by a boycott by artists affiliated with the Generación de la Ruptura.

[4] For the university's 75th anniversary, the image was reproduced on a Chilean stamp and in 1996, it was named the most beautiful mural in the world at an event in Vienna .

[10] Other notable murals during González Camarena's career include La erupción de Xitle (an oil/wax work) at the Cuicuilco site.

[2] His best known work of this type is La Patria, an image of a woman with national symbols to represent the country of Mexico.

In appreciation, the Bulgarian government sponsored a European tour of Gonzalez Camarena's work which ended up in the Museo de Arte Moderno in New York.

[1] He worked with various styles, textures and techniques, ranging from Surrealism to Cubism to Magical Realism, and most of his paintings contains social and mystical motifs.

Mauricio Gómez Mayorga stated that “His faith in geometry and form, that is, in space and matter, make him a constructor, a builder of plane and mass.”[1] Although part of the Mexican muralist movement, his work is distinct from the three main names associated with it (Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros).

[4] Although Diego Rivera called him “the most Mexican of all,”[4] José Clemente Orozco did not like his preference for archeology and Mexico's past, feeling that Gonzalez Camarena squandered his talent by not expressing what he felt.

[2][4] In the interpretation of Mexican history, Gonzalez Camarena believed that neither the country's indigenous or Spanish cultural background should be denigrated in favor of the other.

He gave his depictions of Mesoamerican deities mythological qualities similar to the treatment of ancient Greek gods.

Notable examples of these include those of his sister Susana, Francisco Díaz de León, Rosa Luz Alegría and Guillermo Soberón.