Mauricio Toussaint
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Mauricio Toussaint (born in 1960) is a contemporary artist of French and Mexican descent. Toussaint was interested in making art from a young age. Following his parents’ expectations to make a living, he entered the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara to obtain a degree in architecture (he graduated in 1985 with a Bachelor degree). During this time, he was encouraged by a professor from the nearby Visual Arts Department to make art on his own. Invited to work at the open workshop at the Centro de Moderno, he made prints from 1982-83 and soon after, he embarked on a series of paintings. By the mid 1980s, he had forged relationships with art professionals from the center, and was soon asked to collaborate as an assistant curator at the Instituto Cultural Cabañas—his career in architecture officially replaced with art.
For the next several years, his paintings and prints were dominated by representational subject matter, but by the 1990s his approach changed to more conceptual concerns. In 1995 Toussaint was awarded in two categories at the prestigious "Salon De Octubre" 1st award in painting and 2nd award in drawing, later after he came to the United States, lured by friends in the music business who encouraged him to join them in Miami. After three years he realized that the stereotypical imagery prevalent in the area was not part of his personal experience, so he left for Arizona, first settling in Phoenix, and finally in Tucson. He became a Dinnerware Art Gallery member from 2000 to 2004. He has had several exhibits in different Mexican cities as well as other countries like Spain, France, Korea and the United Sates. In the year 2009 he became an American citizen.
For the past eight years he has been using and experimenting on his work with beeswax, natural pigments and oil colors a technique named Encaustic over Amate paper on/or wooden panels.
Although his paintings, created by overlapping layers, filled with surprise, were described sometimes like cryptograms or coded paintings, are not easily definable in terms of conventional categories. He uses the drawing as a means with which he creates these unusual compositions, admitting that its artistic activity was rooted in the introspection. In that sense the harmony and the careful position of the elements in his paintings, with the hallucinating fragmentation of text, comes from the Kabbalah, Koran, Bible and readings of the occult. Toussaint work is a product of the conscience and the I-conscious, not timid, but emotional.
Toussaint's work in part of permanent collections at Tucson Museum of Art, Udinotti Museum of Figurative Art, Casa de la Cultura de Zapopan and Museo Raul Anguiano in Guadalajara, México.
[edit] External links and References
- Artistas Plasticos en Jalisco , Tomo I by Carlos Navarro & Helia Garcia. Guadalajara, Jalisco, México 2008 (Spanish)
- III Siglos de Pintura Jalisciense , Cámara de Comercio de Guadalajara by Guillermo Ramírez Godoy, Colonia y Siglo XX. Arturo Camacho Becerra, Siglo XIX. Guadalajara, Jalisco, México 1997 (Spanish)
