José Chávez Morado was a Mexican painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 and sculptor.

Biography

Morado was born in Silao, near the city of Guanajuato

Guanajuato

Guanajuato officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Guanajuato is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 46 municipalities and its capital city is Guanajuato....

, where Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...

 was born, and like Rivera he is a well known and highly regarded painter and sculptor who became most famous for the murals he painted in Mexico

Mexican murals

Mexican murals are an important part of Mexican culture and history. Murals have been used for political, social, environmental, and cultural representation.-Mayans and Aztecs:...

 in the first half of the 20th Century.

In 1925, young Morado took a train to the United States to find work. He worked odd jobs in Canada and all the way to Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

. During a stay in Los Angeles he started studying drawing at the Chouinard School of Arts. He also met José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco was a Mexican social realist painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others...

 at the Pomona College

Pomona College

Pomona College is a private, residential, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. Founded in 1887 in Pomona, California by a group of Congregationalists, the college moved to Claremont in 1889 to the site of a hotel, retaining its name. The school enrolls 1,548 students.The founding member...

. In 1931, he was awarded a grant by the government of Guanajuato to study at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas

National School of Arts (UNAM)

The Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas is a college of art in Xochimilco, Mexico City. The school is part the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and is responsible for teaching art - painting, sculpture and graphic design, with undergraduate and graduate studies in San Carlos...

 under Francisco Díaz de León

Francisco Díaz de León

Francisco Díaz de León was a Mexican engraver.- Biography :...

, Bulmaro Guzman and Emilio Amero

Emilio Amero

Emilio Amero was among the zeitgeist of the Mexican Modern art movement. He was also a member of the first group of muralists commissioned during Post-Revolutionary Mexico, working side by side such luminaries as José Clemente Orozco, Carlos Mérida, and Diego Rivera...

. In 1935, he married a German exile living in Mexico by the name Olga Costa

Olga Costa

Olga Costa,was a woman that worked in a mens club originally named the amazing fox , was a Mexican painter of Russian descent....

. In 1937, he joined the communist party and a year later he became a member of the Taller de Gráfica Popular with Lola Alvarez Bravo

Lola Alvarez Bravo

Lola Álvarez Bravo was a Mexican photographer. She was a key figure in Mexico's post-revolution renaissance....

, Carlos Alvarado Lang

Carlos Alvarado Lang

Carlos Alvarado Lang was a Mexican printmaker.Alvarado Lang studied printmaking under Emiliano Valadéz at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. In 1929 he followed Emiliano Valadéz on his chair. After the course offer of the ENBA was expanded in 1930, he got the chair of engraving...

, Isidoro Ocampo

Isidoro Ocampo

Isidoro Ocampo was a Mexican artist.Ocampo from 1928 to 1932, attended evening classes at the Academy of Arts in San Carlos Academy in Mexico City. In 1929 he became a member of the workshop for book art. He created more than 200 erasures, woodcuts and lithographies...

 and María Izquierdo

María Izquierdo

María Izquierdo was a Mexican painter. She was born in San Juan de los Lagos in the state of Jalisco; her birth name was María Cenobia Izquierdo Gutiérrez. Her father died when she was five years old and she lived with grandparents afterward in small towns of Aguascalientes, Torreón, and Saltillo...

 among others.

His first solo show was held in 1944 at the Galería de Arte Mexicano

Galería de Arte Mexicano

The Galería de Arte Mexicano was founded by Carolina and Inés Amor at march 7, in Mexico City and has been the first gallery of Mexican art. The gallery building was the first building in Mexico of Andrés Casillas de Alba....

. In 1949, he traveled to Europe to study mosaic

Mosaic

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...

s and a year later he returned to Mexico to build some of the most beautiful mosaic murals in the country. His most famous works can be seen at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the Quetzalcoatl

Quetzalcoatl

Quetzalcoatl is a Mesoamerican deity whose name comes from the Nahuatl language and has the meaning of "feathered serpent". The worship of a feathered serpent deity is first documented in Teotihuacan in the first century BCE or first century CE...

 mural at the Centro Medico Siglo XXI, the tower in the patio of the Museo Nacional de Antropologia e Historia and his own personal favorite, the murals at the Alhóndiga de Granaditas

Alhóndiga de Granaditas

The Alhóndiga de Granaditas is an old grain storage building in Guanajuato City, Mexico. This historic building was created to replace an old granary near the city's river. Its construction lasted from 1798 to 1809, by orders of Juan Antonio de Riaño y Bárcena, a Spaniard who was the quartermaster...

 in Guanajuato.

He started working with sculpture in 1960 and created several monumental works in bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

. He was awarded the Premio Nacional de las Artes in 1974 and in 1985 an honorary degree from the UNAM

Unam

UNAM or UNaM may refer to:* National University of Misiones, a National University in Posadas, Argentina*National Autonomous University of Mexico , the large public autonomous university based in Mexico City...

.

External links

• Listings for over 60 works produced by José Chávez Morado during his time at the Taller de Gráfica Popular can be viewed at Gráfica Mexciana.