Pedro Coronel

Biography

As a boy, Pedro Coronel skipped lessons to go to the quarry and watch the workers cut pieces of stone out of the mountain. It took him twelve years to finish primary school. Later the same interest in stone led him to sculpture.

He was born on 25 March 1922 in Zacatecas (by some accounts in the city itself, by others in Jerez de García Salinas in the same state; 1921 and 1923 are also given as the year of his birth). The family was fairly well off: his mother played the violin, his father the clarinet and violin, and on Sundays folk music was played at home. His younger brother Rafael also became a well-known painter. As a child Pedro collected tops, marbles and puppets; according to his biographers, this passion later grew into his collection of art.

He went to Mexico City to study, and from 1940 to 1945 he studied painting and sculpture at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda”, the national school of painting, sculpture and printmaking. There he became friends with Diego Rivera, Francisco Zúñiga and Santos Balmori. He began with sculpture, but Balmori pushed him toward painting, and from then on colour became the main thing for him.

He arrived in Paris in 1946. In the studios of Victor Brauner and Constantin Brâncuși he found, by all accounts, a good deal that he could use in his own work. After that his years were divided between Paris and Mexico City, and in 1950 he travelled through Belgium, France, Spain and North Africa. His first solo exhibition took place in 1954 at the Galería Proteo in Mexico City; it caught the attention of Octavio Paz, who later introduced his Paris exhibition of 1961.

In 1959 the painting “La lucha” (“The Struggle”) won first prize at the National Painting Salon. In the same year he took part in the Paris Biennale for young artists. In 1960, at the Second Inter-American Biennial in Mexico City, he was awarded the José Clemente Orozco Prize for painting and an honourable mention for sculpture. Later came the prize of the Salón de la Pintura (1966), the title of “favourite son” of the state of Zacatecas (1977) and the Premio Nacional de Arte (1984). He was one of the founding members of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

In the 1960s he taught at La Esmeralda, living mostly in Mexico but travelling often to Europe, Asia and the United States. He exhibited in France, Italy, Japan, the United States and Brazil. Together with Mathias Goeritz, Rufino Tamayo and Pedro Friedeberg he took part in the decoration of the Hotel Camino Real in Mexico City.

Critics divide his work into stages: naturalist, structuralist, lyrical, chromatic, and a return to native themes. The early pieces are figurative. In 1953–1957 Expressionism and Picasso are visible, along with everyday objects: bottles, glasses, lamps. Then came allegories with mythical figures (“El advenimiento de ella”, 1958; “Mujeres habitadas”, 1960). From 1962 the palette grows lighter and simpler, and Tamayo’s influence shows. Between 1966 and 1975, when most of his work was produced, he moved toward abstraction. His colours are purer and more intense than Tamayo’s, and the background is not subordinate to the main subject, as it is for other painters, his brother among them. Red and yellow dominate most often. He painted in oil on canvas and masonite, and carved sculptures in onyx and sandstone. Later works that return to pre-Hispanic subjects also survive, for example “El regreso de Quetzalcoatl” (“The Return of Quetzalcoatl”).

He collected pre-Hispanic, African, Asian, Greco-Roman and medieval art, as well as prints and drawings: more than 1,800 pieces, from Roman, Egyptian and Chinese objects to works by Goya, Picasso, Miró and Chagall. When the collection was shown shortly before his death, the public’s reaction prompted Coronel to give it to the people of Mexico.

He died on 23 May 1985 in Mexico City. The lying in state was held at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, with President Miguel de la Madrid and the minister of education standing the first guard of honour. He was first buried in the Panteón Francés de San Joaquín, and on 25 May 1986, as he had wished, his remains were moved to the courtyard of the museum bearing his name in Zacatecas.