Rafael Coronel

Zacatecas, 1931 — Cuernavaca, 2019. He studied architecture at the UNAM and moved to La Esmeralda after winning, at twenty-one, the visual arts competition of the Instituto de la Juventud Mexicana; there he was a pupil of Carlos Orozco Romero. In 1954 he joined Inés Amor’s Galería de Arte Mexicano; he showed solo from 1956 and in 1959 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. He took part in the inaugural exhibition of the Museo de Arte Moderno in 1964 and painted two murals for the Museo Nacional de Antropología. In 1974 he won first prize at the Tokyo Biennial with «Tacubaya: la muerte de la libélula»; he joined the Academia de Artes in 1994 and received the Ibero-American Prize for Merit in the Arts in 2010. The Museo Rafael Coronel in Zacatecas, opened in 1990, holds more than sixteen thousand pieces, among them the largest mask collection in the world.