(b. Zacatecas, Mexico, 1932).
Younger brother of the painter and sculptor Pedro Coronel and son-in-law of Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Rafael Coronel well represents the Ruptura (Rupture) movement in Mexico, also known as Nueva Presencia (New Presence) after a broadsheet of that title that was issued in 1961-63. The movement consisted of a shift away from heroic Muralism toward a more traditional way of art-making. Coronel and others created easel paintings for a professional class that lacked the forceful social statements of the Muralists' works. Coronel's paintings are ambiguous and suggest that man's efforts to control his destiny are futile. His paintings of old men and women, isolated and floating in nebulous space, suggest a return to the Old Master tradition, especially Goya and Spanish painting of the seventeenth century. His first solo exhibition occurred in 1956, and he painted two murals at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City in 1964.
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