As he continued his artistry with aspects of the Mexican muralism movement, he also experimented with other styles such as Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism, with themes such as clowns and prostitutes.
[2] He began drawing at age five using images of movie stars and other famous people as models, including Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, Charlie Chaplin, Álvaro Obregón, Venustiano Carranza and bullfighter Rodolfo Gaona.
[1] At age 12, he left his school to attend Guadalajara’s former Escuela Libre de Pintura,[2][3] where he learned basic artistic techniques and became interested in pre-Hispanic and popular art.
[2][5][3] During his studies and early career, Anguiano worked with various models such as workmen, laborers and a few notable people such as Pita Amor.
[2][4][3] During Anguiano’s long career, almost eight decades, his main studio was in Coyoacán, Mexico City but he had a second home in Huntington Beach, California.
[5][6] Anguiano died on January 13, 2006, at the Hospital Central Militar in Mexico City after becoming ill with heart problems while in Los Angeles.
[4] Since then he has exhibited individually and collectively over one hundred times in museums, galleries and other institutions in countries such as Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, United States, France, Italy, the former Soviet Union, Israel, Germany and Japan.
[1][4] Some of his exhibitions before he died included a retrospective in Los Angeles for the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, a presentation of a series of four color lithographs, held at the Hall of Graphic Arts SAGA 88, from 1989 to 1990, in Paris; and the retrospective look at Anguiano's work in graphics (1938-1940), held at the Museo de la Estampa in Mexico City in 1990.
[5] In 1936, when he was only twenty one, he was commissioned to paint his first mural called La educación socialista, a seventy meter wide piece at the Carlos A. Carrillo School in Mexico City.
[1] He was one of the founders of the Taller de Gráfica Popular along with Leopoldo Méndez, Alfredo Zalcoe and Pablo O'Higgins, which produced etchings and lithographs with political themes.
[1][11] Anguiano is an important artist of the 20th century, known nationally and best known internationally for his oil paintings depicting the indigenous peoples of Mexico.
[2][4] He was part of the continuance of their tradition, called the “second generation” along with Juan O'Gorman, Jorge González Camarena, José Chávez Morado, Alfredo Zalce, Jesús Guerrero Galván and Julio Castellanos.
Oils and other works had themes from pre Hispanic ruins, especially Mayan stele, landscapes and the life and customs of the Lacandon Jungle.
[4] Work such as La Espina, Lacandonas asando monos zarahuatos and Nákin de perfil, depicted indigenous as contemporary people, rather than historical.
[2] Although firmly a member of the Mexican muralism movement, Anguiano experimented with a number of artistic styles over his career, with his most important influences being Picasso and José Clemente Orozco.
[8] The Raúl Anguiano Museum was inaugurated in 2003 to provide a space to store and exhibit over one hundred works the artist donated to the state before his death.