Manuel Felguérez
Manuel Felguérez was born in Valparaíso, Zacatecas, in 1928. At the age of seven, he moved with his family to Mexico City, where his interest in art blossomed. After a trip to Europe at the age of 19, he decided to dedicate himself to sculpture. He studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris under the tutelage of the sculptor Ossip Zadkine and also frequented Brancusi's studio. His artistic training also included a period in Mexico under the guidance of Francisco Zúñiga at La Esmeralda.
Felguérez was a central figure in the Generación de la Ruptura (Breakaway Generation), a movement that broke with the established norms of the Mexican School of Painting. His visual language, centered on abstraction, encompasses sculpture, painting, muralism, and object art. Since 1958, he has exhibited in museums and galleries in Mexico, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and his work is part of important public and private collections.
He was a pioneer in the use of technology in art. With a Guggenheim Fellowship, he developed his project "The Aesthetic Machine" in the 1970s, integrating computational processes into artistic design, becoming a precursor of digital art in Mexico and Latin America. He also worked as a set designer in film and theater, collaborating with Alejandro Jodorowsky on "The Holy Mountain."
In academia, Felguérez taught at institutions such as the Universidad Iberoamericana, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Cornell, and Harvard. He helped found the Visual Arts program at UNAM and was a researcher at the Institute of Aesthetic Research. His pedagogical work and critical thinking influenced generations of artists.
Among his many accolades are the National Arts Prize (1988), the Bellas Artes Medal (2015), the Order of Isabella the Catholic (2006), and the creation of the Manuel Felguérez Museum of Abstract Art in Zacatecas (1998), the only one of its kind in Latin America. His legacy, which blends tradition, innovation, and experimentation, positions him as an essential figure in contemporary Mexican art.
