Pedro Coronel

Pedro Coronel (March 25, 1922 – May 23, 1985) was a Mexican sculptor and painter. He was part of the Generación de la Ruptura, which brought innovation into Mexican art in the mid 20th century. Coronel's training was with artists of the Mexican muralism tradition, with influence from artists like Diego Rivera. This influence remained with the use of pre Hispanic themes and colors in his work. However, his artistic trajectory took him towards more use of color and more abstract forms in his work, due to influences from artists such as Rufino Tamayo. His work was exhibited and gained recognition in Mexico, the United States and Europe. Shortly before his death, he donated his considerable personal art collection to the people of Mexico, which was used to open the Museo Pedro Coronel in the city of Zacatecas.

Life Pedro Coronel was born on March 25, 1921, in Jerez, Zacatecas to an upper-middle-class family. His mother played the violin and his father played the clarinet and violin. On Sundays they would get together and play folk music. The youngest of his brothers and sisters, Rafael, became a well-known painter of Moors, monks and the elderly. During this time, he also worked with Mathias Goeritz, Rufino Tamayo and Pedro Friedeberg on the Hotel Camino Real in Mexico City. He said he feared death only because it would end his painting. He was briefly married to Amparo Dávila, a Mexican writer but his long-term eighteen-year relation was with his second wife, Réjane Lalonde.

Over his life, he amassed a large collection of pre Hispanic, African, Asian, Greco-Romano and Medieval art along with graphic art, with over 1,800 pieces from various places and times including Roman, Egyptian and Chinese works as well as art and handcrafts from Africa, the Mexican colonial period and works by Goya, Picasso, Miró and Chagall. In his early career he worked in Paris with Victor Brauner and sculptor Constantin Brâncuși. In 2005, the Museo de Arte Moderno had a retrospective of his work thirty years after his death, mostly of large scale oils. In 2009, there was an exhibition of his graphic work at the state government building of Tabasco in Villahermosa. The Museo Pedro Coronel sponsors an art competition in his name called the Pedro Coronel Biennal, sponsored by the state of Zacatecas along with CONACULTA and Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes .