This is especially true of his “white stage” which is marked by cold colors and tragic scenes focusing on human figures which are skeletal or ghost-like.

[1][2][3] He was from a wealthy family, the son of Manuel Z. Rodríguez and Sara Lozano, who were interested in art and music and entertained visitors such as poet Amado Nervo.

[2][3] He then began to paint on his own in 1910,[2][4] moving on to attend the Academy of San Carlos under teachers such as Germán Gedovius and Alfredo Ramos Martínez.

[2][4] However, shortly after the marriage, General Mondragón was involved in the Decena tragica and the assassination of Francisco I. Madero, which forced the entire family into exile into Europe for eight years.

[3] His time in Europe, especially Paris, put him in touch with avant garde artists such as Matisse, Braque and Picasso as well as writers such as André Salmon, Jean Cassou and Andre Lothe, who influenced his art.

[3][7] After Rodríguez Lozano returned from Europe to Mexico in 1921, he exhibited his work at the Department of Fine Arts and in San Carlos.

[2] The following year, out of necessity, he accepted a position as a drawing teacher for elementary schools, introducing a technique developed by Adolfo Best Maugard .

The two founded the Ulises Theater, the headquarters for the Contemporáneos group and an important meeting place for artists and intellectuals such as Salvador Novo, Isabela Corona and Celestino Gorostiza.

The organization not only put on plays for which Rodríguez did set design, it also edited and published books such as Dama de corazones by Xavier Villaurrutia and Los hombres que disperse la danza by Andrés Henestrosa.

[2][3][7] From 1932 to 1933, he painted Los tableros de la muerte, commissioned by Iturbe, and in 1935 he finished Il Verdaccio, one of his most important works.

[3] In 1940, Rodríguez Lozano was appointed as the director of the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, and then invited artists such as Diego Rivera, Antonio M. Ruíz, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Luis Ortiz Monasterio and Jesús Guerrero Galván to work with the school.

The school received a request to lend engravings by Albrecht Dürer and Guido Reno for the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Colegio de San Nicolás in Michoacán.

[2] Rodríguez Lozano’s work was recognized with a retrospective as part of Mexico City’s 1968 Summer Olympics,[3] as well as another posthumously in 2011 at the Museo Nacional de Arte.

[10] Rodríguez Lozano began his career at the time that Mexican muralism was being established as the main artistic movement in the country.

José Vasconcelos invited the artist to participate in the government projects being sponsored but the Rodríguez Lozano refused because he did not believe that art should be used for political messages.

[8] While his subject matter was generally related to life in Mexico, especially its suffering, he also did a number of portraits such as those of Jaime Torres Bodet, Daniel Cosío Villegas and Rodolfo Usigli, with one done of Antonieta Rivas Mercado after her death.

[3][7][9] Works still focus on human figures, but these evolve from robust to elongated, sublime and almost skeletal or ghost-like, with forms styled to their fundamentals.