Francisco Zúñiga

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Squatting Nude", at the Ilana Goor Museum.
In this
Spanish name, the first or paternal surname
is Zúñiga and the second or maternal family name is Chavarría.
A bronze sculpture by Francisco Zuniga, on the campus of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.

José Jesús Francisco Zúñiga Chavarría (December 27, 1912 – August 9, 1998[1]) was a Costa Rican-born Mexican artist, known both for his painting and his sculpture.[2] Journalist Fernando González Gortázar lists Zúñiga as one of the 100 most notable Mexicans of the 20th century,[3] while the Encyclopædia Britannica calls him "perhaps the best sculptor" of the Mexican political modern style.[4]

Biography

Zúñiga was born in Guadalupe, Barrio de San José, Costa Rica on December 27, 1912, to Manuel Maria Zúñiga and María Chavarría, both sculptors. His father worked as a sculptor of religious figures, and in stone work. His artistic inclinations began early and by the age of twelve had already read books on the history of art, artistic anatomy and the life of various Renaissance painters. At age fifteen he began working in his father's shop. This experience sensitized him to shape and spaces.

German Expressionism and the writings of Alexander Heilmayer, through which he learned of the work of two French sculptors, Aristide Maillol and Auguste Rodin, coming to appreciate the idea of subordinating technique to expression.[5]

Zúñiga's painting and sculpting work began receiving recognition in 1929.[6] His first stone sculpture won second prize at the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes. In the following two years continued to win top prizes at this event. This work made critics recommend him for study abroad.[5] He won first prize in a 1935 Latin American sculpture competition, the Salón de Escultura en Costa Rica, for his stone sculpture La maternidad,[8] but the work caused controversy and the government rescinded its award.[5] In the 1930s, he began to research pre Hispanic art and its importance to contemporary Latin American art, as well as what was happening artistically in Mexico.[6] The scholarship never materialized so various colleagues organized his first individual exhibition in Costa Rica. The earnings from this endeavor earned his passage to Mexico City.[5] In 1936 he immigrated to Mexico permanently.[9][10]

In the capital, his first contact with

National Institute of Fine Arts.[8]

In the 1940s, the

New York Museum of Modern Art acquired the sculpture Cabeza de niño totonaca and the Metropolitan Museum of Art requested two of his drawings. He also helped to found the Sociedad Mexicana de Escultores and received commissions in various parts of Mexico.[5]

In 1947, he married Elena Laborde, a painting student. They had three children, Ariel, Javier and Marcela.[5]

In 1949, he was part of the founding board of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, and in 1951, he joined the Frente Nacional de Artes Plástica of Francisco Goitia .[5]

Major individual exhibitions during his career include the Bernard Lewin Gallery in Los Angeles in 1965, a retrospective at the Museo de Arte Moderno in 1969 and various exhibitions in Europe in the 1980s.[5]

In 1971, he received the Acquisition Prize at the 1971 Biennial of Open Air Sculpture of Middelheim in Antwerp, Belgium. In 1975 twenty of his drawings with the Misrachi Gallery obtained the silver medal at the International Book Exposition of Leipzig. In the 1980s, he was named an Academic of the Accademia delle Arte e del Lavoro in Parma, Italy. In Mexico he won the Elías Sourasky Prize.[5]

In 1984 he won the first Kataro Takamura Prize of the Third Biennial of Sculpture in Japan.[5]

He became a Mexican citizen in 1986, fifty years after his arrival in the country.[5][6]

In 1992 he received the Premio Nacional de Arte, and in 1994, the Palacio de Bellas Artes held a tribute to his career.[5]

Near the end of his life, illness left him nearly blind, which caused him to shift his artistic work to terra cotta, using his hands to create the lines.[5]

Works

Zúñiga created over thirty five public sculptures, such as the monument to poet

Sendai, Japan. During his lifetime, these were considered his most important works. Since then, they have become secondary to his other sculpting.[5][6]

He stated that he preferred figurative art because he found the human figure to be “the most important aspect of the world around (him)”. He was also strongly influenced by pre Hispanic art, spending significant time sketching pieces in museums, along with images of women in traditional markets, feeling that they represented maternity and familial responsibility.[5]

Museums holding his works in their permanent collections include the

Ponce Museum of Art in Puerto Rico, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.[7]

References

  1. ^ "Biography". Archived from the original on 2018-02-26. Retrieved 2016-07-25.
  2. Washington Post
    , June 18, 1993.
  3. ^ "Mis cien mexicanos del siglo XX". La Jornada, January 30, 2000.
  4. ^ Latin American art, Encyclopædia Britannica.
  5. ^
    ISBN 968-5005-58-3
    .
  6. ^
    ISBN 968-6258-56-6
    .
  7. ^ a b c Biography Archived 2012-02-08 at the Wayback Machine, Medicine Man Gallery.
  8. ^ a b Biografia de Francisco Zúñiga, Biografias y Vidas.
  9. ^ a b "Con su obra, Francisco Zúñiga retorna a su natal Costa Rica". La Jornada, January 15, 1999.
  10. ^ "Muere destacado escultor mexicano Francisco Zuniga". Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 14, 1998.
  11. ^ Biography, Joan Cawley gallery.
  12. ^ May S. Marcy Sculpture Court and Garden Archived 2007-10-06 at the Wayback Machine, San Diego Museum of Art.
  13. ^ "Searchable Art Museum". New Mexico Museum of Art. Retrieved 11 August 2013.

Books

Additional sources

External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Francisco Zúñiga.
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