Pedro Coronel
[Mexican Painter, 1906 - 1955]
Biography
Painter, sculptor, draftsman and engraver, Pedro Coronel was born in the city of Zacatecas in 1923. He studied painting and sculpture in La Esmeralda National School of Painting and Sculpture from 1940 to 1945 under Juan Cruz, Francisco Zúñiga and Santos Balmori and was later a teacher there himself. In 1946, Coronel went to Paris, where he attended workshops directed by the painter Victor Brauner and the sculptor Constantin Brancusi. From then on he lived alternately in Mexico and Paris. He belonged to a generation of painters that viewed the consumation of the Mexican Renaissance with mural painting. His first individual exhibition was in the Galería Proteo in 1954. Later he exhibited in France, Italy, Japan, the United States and Brazil.
Dramatization of the colors of the ancient cultures and the recovery of their shapes and motifs are basic features of Coronel´s work. As well as being a creator, Pedro Coronel was an enthusiastic collector of pre-Columbian, Oriental, Greco-Roman and medieval art and graphic art. He finally donated his collection to the people of Mexico in a museum bearing his name. Some writers have divided his career into the following stages: naturalist, structuralist, lyric, chromatic and the rediscovery of the native world picture. He was awarded the National Prize fro Plastic Arts one year before his death in 1985.
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