Pedro Coronel
Untitled

1981
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated "Pedro Coronel Paris 81" verso
Canvas: 47.25" x 47.5"; Frame: 59.75" x 59.75"
Provenance: Private Collection, Coronado, California;
Private Collection, California (acquired directly from the above, 2013)
Literature: Pedro Coronel: Retrospectiva. Mexico City: Museo de Arte Moderno, 2005. pp 110-115 (for similar examples from this period).

Estimate: $150000 - $200000


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Painter and sculptor Pedro Coronel (1922-1985) was associated with a new generation of artists dedicated to revitalizing Mexican art through personal expression and universal aesthetics. Born in Zacatecas, Coronel studied under the guidance of Diego Rivera at "La Esmeralda," the National School of Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking, before settling in Paris shortly after a visit in 1946. For the next twenty years, he divided his time between Mexico City and Paris, where he studied with Victor Brauner and Constantin Brâncusi. Sculpture rapidly gave way to oil painting, and by the 1960s, Coronel was regularly exhibiting his works in France, Mexico, and the United States. As Coronel began incorporating elements of his pre-Hispanic heritage amidst his abstract compositions, he soon became associated with the Generación de la Ruptura (The Breakaway Generation), a group of young artists who criticized Mexican muralism in favor of universal painting styles such as Abstract Expressionism and Cubism. Since this movement focused on personal expression as a rejection of the status quo in Mexican painting, their individual styles varied greatly. They were unified, however, in their stance against government funded nationalistic art so that they could expose the rich landscape of Mexican art to an international audience. Influenced by his Breakaway Generation contemporaries, chiefly his friend Rufino Tamayo, Coronel transitioned from figurative painting to abstract works with indigenous themes, ending his career with a quest for intense color. Untitled (1981) – painted in Paris four years before his death – achieves a pure spectrum of pink and red forms in harmony with a brown background. Similar examples of this work were included in the 2005 Coronel retrospective at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City.






"Latin American Visionaries: Pedro Coronel." AnitaShapolskyGallery.com. Anita Shapolsky Gallery, n.d. Web. 26 Aug. 2013.