Manuel Felguérez Barra (December 12, 1928 – June 8, 2020) was a Mexican abstract artist, part of the Generación de la Ruptura that broke with the muralist movement of Diego Rivera and others in the mid 20th century.

Felguérez was born in the state of Zacatecas in 1928, but political instability caused his family to lose their land there and move to Mexico City.

As attitudes in Mexico changed towards art, Felguérez found acceptance for his work and remained active at over eighty years of age.

Manuel Felguérez was born on his family's San Agustín del Vergel hacienda near Valparaíso, Zacatecas, on December 12, 1928.

His father owned the family hacienda, the great-great-grandson of landholders, but by the early 20th century, these landowners were despised by the general populace.

There was pressure to join gangs and rob; he liked to box and see lucha libre at the Arena México He tried marijuana in his youth and he favored its legalization until his death.

They then decided to hitchhike around various countries including Italy, Switzerland, France, and England, staying at houses of Scouting contacts and visiting museums.

[4] Although his mother wanted him to be a doctor, he was impressed by the European art he saw, especially that of English painter William Turner and announced to Ibarguengoitia that he would become an artist.

[4][6] He entered the Academy of San Carlos in 1948, but lasted only four months, as he did not like its conformity with the dominant artistic movement in Mexico at that time, Escuela Mexicana de Pintura.

[6][7] He returned to France with his wife and daughter, with a large studio in the Casa de Mexico, where he met Lilia Carrillo, who was then married to Ricardo Guerra.

[11] He had homes in Colorado and the Olivar de los Padres neighborhood of Mexico City,[3][4] as well as a workshop at the Abstract Art Museum in Zacatecas.

[1] Felguérez's career included painting, planning sculptures, thirty years as a professor, work in theatre and cinema and handcraft design.

[5][6] He is classified as a member of the Generación de la Ruptura along with Vicente Rojo Almazán, Rodolfo Nieto, José Luis Cuevas, Alberto Gironella, Myra Landau, Lilia Carrillo, Francisco Corzas, Fernando García Ponce and Arnaldo Coen, following the more abstract style pioneered by Carlos Mérida, Cordelia Urueta, Günther Gerzso and Juan Soriano.

[7][14] Most of these were done early in his career with thirty relief murals using materials such as scrap metal, stones, sand and shells finished by the end of the 1960s.

[4] His first exhibition was in 1954 at the Instituto Francés de América Latina, where he was favorably received by Justino Fernández, Paul Westheim and Mathias Goeritz.

In 2009 was the exhibition Manuel Felguérez, Invención Constructiva at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City which was inaugurated by President Felipe Calderón.

[15][17] For the Bicentennial of Mexico's Independence, Felguérez's mural "Ecuación en Acero" (Equation in Steel) was inaugurated by the same president at the Secretariat of Public Education.

[12] To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Mexico–China relations in 2012, the Mexican government sponsored the exhibition "Manuel Felguérez: Obra reciente" in Beijing.

[21] Felguérez ventured into digital art by becoming a teacher at the Ibero-American university, at that time there were only three computers in Mexico, one in the IMSS and another at the UNAM, only one open to the student body in general; there he managed to work once a week for an hour and started experimenting with geometry.

[22] Later he obtained a Guggenheim scholarship and served as a guest researcher at Harvard, where he had his own computer, the results of his experimentation were published in a book called "multiple space", which gave him the status of being a pioneer in digital art in Mexico.

[24] The formation of Felguérez's style and imagery is closely tied to the various movements of Europe such as incorporating geometric-constructivist, informalism and abstract expressionism which he was exposed to in his early training.

His emphasis on the new as well as his negative experience with establishment artists of the 1940s caused him to state emphatically that he did not want to create another school of art in Mexico.

[2] The initial donation was from Felguérez's own private collection and given to the museum on the condition that it would be dedicated to the abstract art of his generation and those thereafter.