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featured artists
José Luis Cuevas
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biography
(b. Mexico City, 1934).
This Mexican painter draughtsman, and printmaker showed artistic talent as a child and later briefly attended the Escuela Nacional de Pintura y Escultura 'La Esmeralda' in Mexico City, which he left because he did not agree with its teaching methods; he was thus essentially self-taught. He studied graphic arts at the Institución de Enseñanza Universitaria in Mexico City c. 1948. At the Galleria Prisse in Mexico City he joined a group of young artists, including Enrique Echeverriá, Alberto Gironella, Pedro Coronel, Manuel Felguerez and Francisco Icaza who formed a group called La Ruptura, who were opposed to the socialist artists favoured by the Government and whose rebellion against the official mural art was instrumental in modifying the contemporary artistic panorama. Cuevas conducted an aggressive polemic against David Alfaro Siqueiros and his more dogmatic followers, publishing the manifesto 'La cortina de nopal' (Novedades, 1957) which advocated greater artistic freedom. In 1953 he had his first exhibition at the Galería Prisse; its success led to its being shown the following year at the Pan American Union, Washington, DC, and later to Cuevas's receiving worldwide exposure and recognition as a draughtsman and graphic artist. He was subsequently invited to work in various workshops worldwide, including the Tamarind Workshop in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Poligrafa in Barcelona in 1981, while in Mexico he worked at the Taller Kyron, among others. Cuevas published numerous illustrated books and graphic series on personal, social and historical themes; he also designed costumes. He is a skilled draughtsman with both pencil and ink pen, and in his printmaking he experimented constantly with new materials and techniques. His work is satirical, incisive and grotesque in style, and he sometimes visited mental asylums, old people's homes and brothels to seek inspiration in deformity and sordidness. Cuevas divides his time between Mexico City and Paris.
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