Orozco Romero, Carlos

19th-20th Century Mexican

Though Orozco started out drawing caricatures under the name of Karikato, his greatest achievements were in easel painting though he also created some murals in his native Jalisco. A member of the Centro Bohemio collective in Guadalajara, where he associated with Siqueiros (1896-1974) and Xavier Guerrero (1896-1974), like most of the painters from his generation he enrolled at LEAR (League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists) and obtained grants to study in Spain and France.

He would later carry out discreet albeit relevant functions in the public sector involving cultural promotion: he was cofounder of La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking, working there twenty years as a teacher (with pupils as relevant as Lilia Carrillo (1930-1974), Gilberto Aceves Navarro (1931-2019) and Rafael Coronel (1931-2019) among others) and, together with the composer Carlos Chávez, he promoted the gallery at the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the school of dance at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. He was also the director of the country’s first Museo de Arte Moderno, at the time located in the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

Like his coevals Manuel Rodríguez Lozano (1896-1971), Antonio Ruiz (1892-1964) and María Izquierdo (1902-1955), Orozco conveys a refined introspective vision that eschewed nationalism and the political and social controversies that prevailed throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

Carlos Orozco Romero