Friedeberg, Pedro | Colección

20th-21st Century Mexican

Pedro Friedeberg arrived in Mexico in 1940 with his family, fleeing from World War II. He trained as an architect, studies that sparked his artistic vocation. He met the painter and sculptor Mathias Goeritz (1915-1990), whose invitation to become part of the Los Hartos neo-Dada group in 1960 encouraged Friedeberg to follow the path of creativity.

He had his first solo exhibition in 1959 at Galería Diana, in Mexico City. An always provocative and fiercely individualistic scholar, Pedro Friedeberg rejected the surrealist label that has become trite in certain of its Bretonian derivations. He was one of the few close friends of the painter Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), with whom he had fun creating exquisite corpses.

Friedeberg has presented his work in countless solo and group exhibitions worldwide. In 1966 he took part at the Cordoba Biennale, Argentina, winning second prize, and in 1979 at the Buenos Aires Engraving Triennial and the San Juan Biennale, in Puerto Rico, obtaining the second and first prize respectively. He was distinguished with a special prize at the International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo, Japan. In 2009, the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes organised a survey show of his life’s work. In 1993 he was appointed a member of Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (national system of art creators), an art association belonging to FONCA (National Endowment for Culture and Arts).