Rafael Coronel
His representational paintings have a melancholic sobriety, and include faces from the past great masters, often floating in a diffuse haze.
He studied in Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda", and he quickly developed a unique artistic vocabulary.
When his father told him that Pedro, his brother, was studying to become a painter in Mexico City, he thought it was a great waste of time.
For the scholarship to be effective, he had to study in some painting school, so he decided to enter "La Esmeralda", two months later he was expelled for disobeying the teachers.
The intentions of Coronel during that time were to show the Latin American people without garnishing them like Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, or José Clemente Orozco.
On the occasion of his 80th birthday in September 2011 Fine Arts opened in "retro-futuristic", an exhibition of 109 works that Coronel created 18 that year.
All stages in the creative life are represented in Coronel's retrofuturism, not just the time when performing works closely related to Spanish painting, as most of the audience remembers.
Its rooms present a collection of more than 16,000 pieces, including masks, drawings, pots, terracotta, Prehispanic objects, puppets, votive offerings, pictures, crafts, musical instruments and colonial furniture.
However most of the exhibits displayed in the museum are the artist's collections, such as the pot room, where many pre-Hispanic figures are shown in a wide exposure.
1967 (January 9) – He shows in The Gallery of Modern Art, Phoenix, Arizona, USA .He exhibits “Mi abuela”.
1968 (February 12-March 2) – He exhibits in the Gallery of Mexican Art “Rafael Coronel 20 óleos y 100 dibujos del viaje número 13".
He exhibited the familiar portrait and the brothers and inside the drawings Naked of a girl and Man Back in June on “Rafael Coronel Oleos”.
1969 (September 8) – He received from the governor of Zacatecas, Ruiz González, él "Racimo de Oro" gave by the Vitivinícola of Vergel, S.A Company because of his merit as a Zacatecan artist on October 27.
1974 (February 15) – Participated in an exposition at The B. Lewin Galleries, Beverly Hills, California, USA known as "Rafael Coronel major exhibition".
(March 15) – He received the invitation to participate in the I Bienal Internacional de Pintura Figurativa "The new image of the paint” in Japan (Tokyo and Osaka).
Collective Exhibition “"primer Festival Deportivo y Cultural Rodrigo Gómez" in the Bank of Mexico 1990 (January–July) – He traslades to Zacatecas with Jose Antonio Cruz to collaborate with Alfonso Soto Soria and his team in the Montaje del Museo Rafael Coronel.
Carlos Salinas de Gortari and the governor Genaro Borrego Estrada, inaugurated in the San Francisco Convent the “Museo Rafael Coronel”.
It has 5000 400 pieces prehispanic Mexican masks, 1500 colonial pottery, 200 puppets Rosete Aranda Company and 100 drawings by Diego Rivera.
1991 (May 9) – Retrospective exhibition at the Mezzanine of the Tower of Petróleos Mexicanos in connection with the book launch Rafael Coronel, edited by PEMEX.
Retrospective Exhibition "Painter Rafael Coronel" in the Gallery of the Cultural Complex Tonalli Yoliztli Soot.
1994 (February 14-April 29) – Was a Retrospective exhibition "17 works of Rafael Coronel" in the International Airport "Benito Juarez" in Mexico City.
1997 (April) – Group exhibition "Collection Bernard and Edith Lewin Art Museum of Los Angeles County."
1952 (19–21 July) – Received an Award of Plastic Arts Competition held by the Instituto Nacional de la juventud Mexicana (National Institute of Mexican Youth), directed by Mariano Ramírez Vázquez.
As a requirement for him to be awarded the scholarship, he had to enroll into the School of painting and sculpture Esmeralda, where Carlos Orozco Romero was his teacher.
1954 – On a recommendation from the Guatemalan painter Carlos Mérida, Rafael Coronel met Ines Amor and entered into the Mexican Art Gallery, Leaved La Esmeralda.
(13–22 October) – Individual exhibition at the Gallery of Mexican Art called "Doscientos estudios para una pequeña zoología””.
