Gilberto Aceves Navarro

Gilberto Aceves Navarro (September 24, 1931 – October 21, 2019) was a Mexican painter and sculptor and a professor at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas and Academy of San Carlos. There have been more than two hundred individual exhibits of his work, with his murals found in Mexico, Japan and the United States. He received numerous awards for his work including grants as a Creador Artístico of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes and Bellas Artes Medal from the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes.

Life Aceves Navarro was born on September 24, 1931, in Mexico City, to María Francisco de los Angeles Navarro and Juan Aceves Jacques, the youngest of three children. His mother was an opera singer who read tarot cards and practiced other kinds of magical arts. While at school in 1951, he was an assistant to David Alfaro Siqueiros on work at the dean's offices of UNAM. In 1952, he went with Luis Arenal to help paint the state government palace of Guerrero in Chilpancingo but when he returned three months later, he was not permitted to register. However, he did return clandestinely to study engraving with Isidoro Ocampo. He has had over 200 individual exhibitions of his work since his first in 1954, with participation in over 300 collective shows. Other places in Mexico where his work has been shown include the Museo Contemporáneo in Toluca, the gallery of the University of Sinaloa, Galería Juan Cabrera in Puebla, Instituto Regional de Bellas Artes in Aguascalientes and San Luis Potosí. Galeria Miro in Monterrey, Galeria Migritte in Guadalajara, Instituto Cultural Cabañas in Guadalajara, Museo de Arte Moderno in Toluca, Museo Biblioteca Pape in Coahuila, Arte Actual Mexicano in Monterrey, ITESM Campus Estado de México and the Instituto Chiapaneco de Cultura. Outside of Mexico, his work has been exhibited 1958 Pan American Union meeting in Washington, D.C., the Brooklyn Museum, La Joya Gallery in Los Angeles, Bienal Latinoamericana in São Paulo Brazil, Casa de las Américas in Havana, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo at the University of Chile, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bogotá, Colombia and the Museo de Artes Plásticas y Visuales in Montevideo, Uruguay, IBM Gallery in New York, Sagacho Exhibit Space in Tokyo, Pabellón de las Artes, Expo-Sevilla Spain, Hamburische Landesbank in Hamburg, Norddeutsche Landesbank in Hanover.

Since the 1950s, he has taught art in one form or another to the present. From 1955–1957 he was a teacher at the Instituto Regional de Bellas Artes in Acapulco. Since 1998, these classes have been held at his studio in Colonia Roma. He has also given workshops in Guanajuato, Monterrey, Oaxaca, Mexico City, Colima, Saltillo and Morelia.

In 1993 he created the scenery for the play La Caída de Drácula at the Centro Cultural Helénico, and for En la boca de fuego at Cárceles de la Perpetua.

He received awards from the Salon de la Plástica Mexicana three times (1958, 1964 and 1971). He received the Premio al Mérito Universitario from UNAM for his teaching work in 1989. In 1997 and 2000, he received grants as a Creador Artístico of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, becoming a member of the selection committee in 2002. In 2001, he was inducted into the Academia de Artes and named Creador Emérito of Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte /CONACULTA. In 2003 he received the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes in Mexico City and the Bellas Artes Medal from the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in 2011.

Artistry Aceves Navarro never retired, even into his eighties, because he loved to paint. He liked to see how colors and forms take shape. He considered art not a simple pleasant vocation but rather a need and a kind of mental exercise. He created murals, oils, drawings, monumental sculpture, theater and poetry.

He said that drawing was fundamental to his life, and preferred to work alone in his studio.

His art shows influence from David Alfaro Siqueiros, Carlos Orozco Romero, Raúl Anguiano and Ignacio Aguirre. His work is considered to be between that of the Muralist generation and that of the Generación de la Ruptura, with elements of both but he preferred to be classed with the Ruptura. Aceves Navarro's work has also been described as a precursor to figurative expressionism.