Jose Chavez Morado

Art Brokerage: Jose Chavez Morado Mexican Artist: b. 1909-2002. José Chávez Morado (4 January 1909 – 1 December 2002) was a Mexican artist who was associated with the Mexican muralism movement of the 20th century. His generation followed that of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Although Chávez Morado took classes in California and Mexico, he is considered to be mostly self-taught. He experimented with various materials, and was an early user of Italian mosaic in monumental works. His major works include murals at the Ciudad Universitaria, Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes and Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City as well as frescos at the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, which took twelve years to paint. From the 1940s on, he also worked as a cultural promoter, establishing a number of cultural institutions especially in his home state of Guanajuato including the Museo de Arte Olga Costa - José Chávez Morado, named after himself and his wife, artist Olga Costa. He established his art career in the 1930s, starting by teaching drawing classes in primary and secondary schools in 1933. He was named chief of the Fine Arts Section of the Department of Fine Arts of the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) in 1935, and later gave classes in drawing at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura of the SEP in the 1940s. He also was a professor of lithography at the Escuela de Artes del Libro. His students included Felipe Ehrenberg, Luis Nishizawa and Greta Dale. He also did illustration work early in his career such as six linoleum engravings for the Vida nocturna de la Ciudad de México book by Ediciones de Arte Mexicano. His main creations as an artist were murals. His first public work was La lucha antiimperialista! at the Teachers' College in Xalapa, Veracruz in 1935. Chávez Morado's cultural promotions began in the 1940s. He founded and directed the Espiral Gallery and was a founding member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana. In 1948 he was a founding member of the Sociedad para el Impulso de las Artes Plásticas and two years later founded the Taller de Integración Plástica. His work ranged from traditional frescos to those made with vinyl, mosaics, stone, bronze and terracotta. His work was always figurative in the style of Mexican muralism also known as the Escuela Mexicana de Pintura.