Rafael Coronel

Biography:

Rafael Coronel is a painter from Mexico. He was the son-in-law of Diego Rivera. His representational paintings have a melancholic sobriety, and include faces from the past great masters, often floating in a diffuse haze.There are some paintings of his own in Mexico and in other countries. In what was the convent of San Francisco De Almoloyan y De Asis (a building from the 16th century), located in Zacatecas, there is a museum named after him; in this museum, his vast mask collection is shown.
The younger brother of Pedro Coronel, Rafael felt artistic inclinations since his earliest years. He studied in Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda", and he quickly developed a unique artistic vocabulary. Although his paintings are about popular themes, we cannot say that his pieces are spontaneous.
The vocation of being a painter was something Rafael inherited. His grandfather used to decorate churches: he used to paint the decorations all over the walls of the churches. When his father told him that Pedro, his brother, was studying to become a painter in Mexico city, he thought it was a great waste of time. Even the greatest painters in Mexico had to rely on other jobs.
Rafael was more than a teenager who dreamed of becoming a soccer player. Although he always liked to draw, he thought that "Art gives no money to eat, and painting is a complement for other jobs". He didn't even know that there were some professional painters.
When Rafael went to Mexico City he wanted to be a soccer player, a player for the América, but he promised he would study to become an accountant. When he arrived in the capital, he started to like architecture. In 1952 he won a painting contest. The piece that gave him the victory was the Mujer De Jerez, a piece of art done with crayons, since he had no money to buy better things. He won a scholarship of 300 pesos a month. After winning the contest he stated: "I betrayed my father, but I've done good for the country".
For the scholarship to be effective, he had to study in some painting school, so he decided to enter to "La Esmeralda", two months later he was expelled for disobeying the teachers. The intentions of Rafael during that time were to show the latinoamerican people without garnishing them like Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, or like José Clemente Orozco. When you leave the painting alone, the human figure reaches its climax point, to the purest representation of the human being, like the paintings of Rembrandt.
Coronel became a lonely man in 1969 when his wife, Ruth, the daughter of Diego Rivera and Lupe Marín, and mother of his only son, Juan Coronel, died. He has had some girlfriends, and he has traveled around the world next to them. Traveling helps him to "clear his vision about Mexico and makes my painting instincts, and puts me in front of the canvas with my brush, painting and painting".
Rafael worked 20 years in his uncle´s workshop. He said that he has made his best work there. He lived in the city of Cuernavaca since the year 1981.In that studio, he says he made the largest plastic production he has achieved. Since 1981 he has lived in the city of Cuernavaca, in a house surrounded by a wall full of graffiti that appears to protect a vacant lot.
On the occasion of his 80th birthday in September 2011 Fine Arts opened in "retro-futuristic", an exhibition of 109 works that Coronel created 18 that year. These works break with earlier work by Coronel, because "in the same figuration, there are some decrepit characters. He puts the focus on the end of life, of women and men in old age. This is different, because we are used to seeing old age redeemed; in these tables, old age is presented as decline, an aspect never explored", said Juan Coronel Rivera, the son of the artist.
All stages in the creative life are represented in Coronel's retrofuturism, not just the time when performing works closely related to Spanish painting, as most of the audience remembers. In the collection there are also sculptures, drawings and works that have never been exhibited. Retrofuturism also has been presented at the Museo Rafael Coronel in Zacatecas and Monterrey MARCO.
The convent of San Francisco was the first to be founded in the province of Zacatecas in the year 1567, built as a temple. On December 7, 1648 the Temple was burned, and on March 5, 1949 reconstruction commenced.
Its rooms present a collection of more than 16,000 pieces, including masks, drawings, pots, terracotta, Prehispanic objects, puppets, votive offerings, pictures, crafts, musical instruments and colonial furniture. His collection of masks is considered the largest in the world. It also has a collection of works by Diego Rivera, among which is the study of child self-portrait of Diego's mural Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park. This work is on permanent display at the Museo Mural Diego Rivera in Mexico City.

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