Coronel, Rafael | Colección

20th-21st Century Mexican

Had it not been for his elder brother, Pedro (1923-1985), who preceded him in the arts, Rafael Coronel would probably not have discovered the successful career he enjoyed right up until his death. The youngest of the eight children of a tailor, when Rafael was twenty he had a premonition that he should enter a painting competition organised by the Instituto Nacional de la Juventud, in which he won first prize. This recognition consisted of a scholarship to study in Mexico City, where he enrolled at the La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking with Carlos Orozco Romero (1896-1984) as a teacher. He later became an artist on the roster of Galería de Arte Mexicano, whose owner Inés Amor was astounded at his precocious talent and productiveness.

Overcoming many obstacles, he perfected his skills in oil painting and drawing, moving from posterboard to canvas. He created a vast number of works and soon started to sell them. In 1959, his solo show at the Palacio de Bellas Artes led the art critic Luis Cardoza y Aragón to celebrate the “emergence of a new river on the map of Mexican painting.” His work moved the writer Sergio Pitol, who considered him the most truculent painter of the time, together with José Luis Cuevas (1934-2017), describing them as “uncivil and barbaric riffraff struck by insanity, despair and misfortune.”

In the following decade Rafael Coronel moved towards an operatic style that won him widespread commercial success: processions of cardinal-like characters with pointed hats, that led him to experiment with an “environment-less” space, to give an equal status to figure and colour, to ignite sumptuous contrasts between flesh and clothes and turquoise, orange, yellow, purple and emerald green surfaces. In 1990 the artist donated his collection of 10,000 Mexican folk masks to found the Rafael Coronel Museum in his hometown.