3 2 6 5 4 1
Paintings
Paper

A master draftsman, Jose Luis Cuevas played a pivotal role in Latin America's drawing and printmaking renaissance of the sixties and seventies. He is also associated with Latin America's neofigurative movement, along with artists such as Fernando Botero and Antonio Segui. Cuevas was born in Mexico City in 1933. By the age of fourteen, he had illustrated numerous periodicals and books and had had his first exhibition in Mexico City. In 1953 Cuevas published La cortina del nopal (The Cactus Curtain), an article condemning aspects of the Mexican Mural movement and advocating greater artistic freedom.

This philosophy inspired the founding in 1960 of the group Nueva Presencia, which he joined for a brief time. It promoted individual expression and figurative art reflecting the contemporary human condition. Cuevas' work was influenced by the graphic art of Goya and Picasso as well as by Posada and Orozco, whose representations of deformed creatures, degraded humanity and prostitutes were of particular thematic interest.

Click here to read more about Cuevas

 

 

 

 

 
Biography
in the collection
Writings by the artist
Writings about the artist
Permanent Collection

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jose Luis Cuevas
(Biography)

It is for this reason that he often distorts and transforms the human figure to the point of uniqueness. Cuevas has had solo exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the world including the University of Texas, Austin, 1961, the San Francisco Museum of Art, California, 1970, the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, 1972, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas, 1974, Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, 1975, Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1976. His work was included in Four Masters of Line: Jose Luis Cuevas, Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, and Morris Graves, Musee de la Napoule, France, 1957 and in The Emergent Decade, Cornell University and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1965. Among his many awards are First International Prize for Drawing, Biennial of Sao Paulo, 1959, First Prize, International Black and White Exhibition, Lugano, Switzerland, 1962, First International Prize for Printmaking, Triennial of Graphic Arts, New Delhi, India, 1968, First Prize, III Latin American Print Biennial, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1977. Cuevas was awarded the National Prize for Fine Arts in Mexico in 1981 and represented Mexico at the 1982 Venice Biennial. In 1992 the Museo Jose Luis Cuevas was inaugurated in Mexico City.

 

Top