Pedro Coronel

He was part of the Generación de la Ruptura, which brought innovation into Mexican art in the mid 20th century.

Shortly before his death, he donated his considerable personal art collection to the people of Mexico, which was used to open the Museo Pedro Coronel in the city of Zacatecas.

[2] His interest in art led him to study at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" when he was only thirteen, when the school had teachers such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Frida Kahlo and Francisco Zúñiga.

[2] In the 1960s, he was a teacher at La Esmeralda, residing mostly in Mexico but traveling frequently to Europe, Asian and the United States.

[2][3] During this time, he also worked with Mathias Goeritz, Rufino Tamayo and Pedro Friedeberg on the Hotel Camino Real in Mexico City.

He was briefly married to Amparo Dávila, a Mexican writer but his long-term eighteen-year relation was with his second wife, Réjane Lalonde.

[2] Most of his artistic production occurred between 1949 and 1984, most of which consists of oils on canvas and masonite as well as sculptures in onyx and sandstone.

[2] From then to the end of his career he exhibited his work in Mexico, France, Italy, the United States and Brazil.

[6] In 2005, the Museo de Arte Moderno had a retrospective of his work thirty years after his death, mostly of large scale oils.

In the opinion of Santos Balmori, Coronel and Rufino Tamayo reinvented Mexican painting from its roots, finding a new way to connect the past with the present.

[2] His work has been divided into stages such as naturalist, structuralist, lyrical, chromatic, and the revival of native indigenous themes.

These paintings include El Advenimiento de Ella and La Lucha both from 1958 and Mujeres Habitadas from 1960.

[2] Two colors which dominate many of his works are red and yellow, which tend to reflect melancholy, passion and loneliness.

[3] While a member of the Generación of the Ruptura, much of his work has pre Hispanic themes and colors, which were marks of the Mexican muralists.

[1] It is located in the former Real Colegio y Seminario de San Luis Gonzada, which was a Jesuit school founded in 1616.