Nicolás Moreno

Nicolás Moreno (28 December 1923 in Mexico City – 4 February 2012) was a Mexican landscape painter, considered to be one of the best of this genre of the 20th century, as well as heir to the Mexican tradition of José María Velasco and Dr. Atl. Although he was born in Mexico City in 1923, he had early contact with nature, traveling with his grandfather and living briefly in Celaya, Guanajuato. He studied art at the country’s Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas but was temporarily discouraged when he was told that landscape painting was a “minor genre.” His work almost completely focuses on the varied landscapes of Mexico, mostly to document it, including environmental degradation. His landscape work includes that which appeared in over 100 individual exhibitions in Mexico and abroad as well as a number of important murals including those at the Museo Nacional de Antropología.

Life

Nicolás Moreno was born in the Santa Julia neighborhood of Mexico City on December 28, 1923. Despite living in large capital city, he had contact with nature at a very early age traveling with his paternal grandfather who worked as a mule driver. This allowed him to see much of the countryside that surrounded Mexico City at the time. He has further experience with the countryside when his family moved to Celaya, Guanajuato when he was ten. However, he spent only a year there before returning to Mexico City because of political instability. He spent the next five years studying and traveling to various parts of Mexico to paint. with individual and collective expositions of his work in the United States, Peru, Spain, France, Germany, England, Russia, China and Japan. He was one of the founding members of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, along with Raúl Aguiano, Dr. Atl, Angelina Beloff, Federico Cantú, Dolores Cueto and Germán Cueto. He created murals of the scenery of Juchitepec and the Mezquital Valley between 1963 and 1964. The latter mural is noted for its depiction of the alternating rainy and dry seasons of the area. He taught artists such as illustrator Carlos Pellicer López.

Artistry He created works in etching, aquatint and drypoint as well as oils, His work, especially those depicting forests, has elements similar to German Romanticist David Friedrich.

Although he has painted landscapes of areas in Europe and South America, the focus of his work has been Mexico. The painter stated that he paints the scenery as he finds it, even areas which have been devastated ecologically. He stated in 2010, “I don’t only look from afar, but also details such as destruction, poverty, misery and beauty. I don’t make pretty pictures, I make painting that are interesting or transcendent, at least to me.”

While he did not consider himself to be an ecological activist, he did express concern about the deterioration of Mexico’s natural landscapes and his art testifies to it. He stated once that “With my work I want to make young people understand that their Earth and its expressions are important because it is a way for them to sense themselves, to be proud of who they are and give proper testimony.” Some of his first landscapes were of the Pedregal in San Ángel, with its hardened lava flows. However, only remnants of this ecosystem remain because of urban sprawl. The Lacandon Jungle has been reduced to a quarter of what it once was since his first visit in 1944.