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. Over the years, he has paid homage to his favorite painters as
well as writers, such as Dostoevsky, Kafka, Quevedo and Sade, in
numerous series of drawings and prints. Cuevas has said that his drawing
represents the solitude and isolation of contemporary man and man's
inability to communicate. 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.
From
Rogallery.com