Alejandro Rangel Hidalgo

Alejandro Rangel Hidalgo (1923–2000) was a Mexican artist, graphic designer and artisan best known for his series of Christmas cards produced for UNICEF in the 1960s, as well as known in Mexico for his furniture designs and promotion of traditional handcrafts. Rangel lived and worked during his life at his childhood home called Nogueras Hacienda. When he died, he donated the property and his large collection of Western Mexico shaft tomb tradition ceramics to University of Colima, which converted into a research center, which includes a museum dedicated to Rangel's works and collections.

Early life Alejandro Rangel Hidalgo was born in 1923, living and working most of his life at his family's property called the Nogueras Hacienda in Comala, Colima, Mexico. Rangel was the eldest of three sons, who grandfather acquired the hacienda, converting it to producing sugar cane and processed sugar.

However, the economy and the sugar cane mill collapsed after the Mexican Revolution, and Rangel's parents did not have the money to send him or his brothers to school. The boys were homeschooled, being taught to read and then subscribing to many magazines devoted to culture and mechanics. Father and sons learned metalworking skills to keep the hacienda running and worked with carpenters to make and repair furniture. The family also set up a store selling toys and other objects created by family, often painted by Alejandro. At the age of six, he announced that he would be a painter.

Later, Alejandro was able to attend middle and preparatory school in Guadalajara. After graduation, he spent time in the workshops of architects Ignacio Díaz Morales and Luis Barragán. In 1947, Rangel won a prize with a scholarship for the illustrations he made for the book Pedro Páramo, written by his friend Juan Rulfo. The scholarship allowed Rangel to travel in Europe for two years, where he worked as a scene illustrator for ballets and operas. When he returned to Mexico, he continued to illustrate books.

His best known work involved the designing of Christmas cards for UNICEF and the New York Graphic Society, which gave him international recognition.

Nogueras Hacienda Rangel's lifelong home of the Nogueras Hacienda remains mostly as it was when he lived there, located in the community of Nogueras, in the municipality of Comala. The hacienda sits in an area which has been occupied by humans for a very long time as attested by the ceramics found in its soil. In the pre Hispanic period the areas was called Ajuchitlan, or Valley of the Flowers. After the conquest, the area became an encomienda of a now-unknown soldier, and evangelization was carried out by the Franciscans, who founded a chapel which still exists on the hacienda. In 1704, Juan de Nogueras acquired the hacienda, giving the area its current name. For the next two hundred years the property would change hands several times, until it was owned by Rangel's grandfather, who made dedicated it to the production of sugar cane and processed sugar.