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Roberto Cortázar

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Roberto Cortázar
Born
Roberto Gómez Cortázar

(1962-01-12)January 12, 1962
Mexico City, Mexico
EducationNational School of Arts; National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving “La Esmeralda” (INBA)
Known forPainting
Notable workSaturn and the Parricides
MovementFigurative art

Roberto Cortázar (born Roberto Gómez Cortázar; 12 January 1962, in Mexico City) is a Mexican painter. He was brought up in Chiapas, Mexico, and lived in Colonia Narvarte in Mexico City.[1]

Academic training and activities

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Roberto Cortázar began his training in 1976 at the National School of Arts, and continued his studies at the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking, known also as "La Esmeralda", with a grant from the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBAL) in Mexico.

He later collaborated with various academic institutions, where he delivered lectures, seminars, and consultations on the historical, philosophical, and theoretical aspects of art. He also contributed to the revision of the academic curriculum at the Mexican National School of Fine Arts. From 1989 to 1993, he served as a founding member of the Consultative Council for the Mexican National Foundation for Culture and the Arts (CONACULTA). During these years, he was a juror for the National Plan for Creators and the National Fund for Plastic Arts.[2]

Museum projects

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Saturn and the Parricides

Presented at the Museo Amparo,[3] in 2006–2008, this project explored the philosophical and moral implications of tyrannicide and parricide. Included artworks were inspired by Greek mythology and Francisco Goya's painting Saturn Devouring his Son. This exhibition toured museums across Mexico, including the Museum of Contemporary art (MARCO); according to the museum:

In the course of his art history studies, Cortázar came upon Francisco Goya's Saturn, which addresses the myth of the god who devoured all of his children to prevent them from overthrowing him. He later found a variation on the theme in the tyrannoktoni or Tyrannicides, the Athenian group of statues depicting a historical event: the murder of the tyrant Hipparcus by Aristogeiton and Harmodios. Musing over these works, he reached the conclusion that the history of art is far removed from the history of man, who writes the latter as a retelling of the battle to gain ascendancy over another, whereas art calls into question this exercise of power and plumbs the truth of human ideology". According to the curator: "In Cortázar's view, his characters' inner struggle is, likewise, the struggle that man must brave to achieve evolution, to cast off the primitive thirst for power that compelled Saturn to devour his children and drove Athenians to do away with Hipparcus.[4]

In 2009, Cortazar was the first living artist invited by the Mexican National Museum of Art to exhibit as part of their program to revisit and reinvigorate the museum's great masters collection for his rendering of a reinterpretation of one of Mexico's greatest masters: José Clemente Orozco.[5][6] His latest museum exhibition was held at the Museo Dolores Olmedo in Mexico City in 2011.[7]

A critic's view

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Edward M. Gomez,[8] an art critic who has written for the New York Times, ARTnews, Art in America, Art & Antiques, Art + Auction, and the Japan Times, has followed Roberto Cortazar's career closely and published several articles and a monograph on his work. In 1999, Gomez wrote extensively about Cortazar's classical approach and meticulous technique.[9] In 2009, Gomez participated in the publication of "In his Reinventing the Master: Cortazar's Variations on Orozco's Themes",[10] where he wrote:

Cortázar, whose art is rooted in Mexico's long, rich tradition of figurative image-making (a tradition that stretches back to the region’s ancient civilizations), has never primarily been motivated by any theory or any aesthetic doctrines. Instead, the art-making language he has developed, with its unique blend of figurative and abstract elements, has evolved out of his technical experiments as a painter and draftsman, and out of his investigation and assimilation of a variety of influences, from the economical, expressive lines of such modern masters as Picasso and Matisse to the figure altering techniques of the Irish-born, British painter Francis Bacon. Like Bacon, who once remarked that "flesh is the reason oil painting was invented," Cortázar approaches and handles his materials in a way that is both elegant and visceral.

Art fairs

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Roberto Cortazar has been a regular participant in art fairs, having participated as an exhibiting artist in over fifteen fairs across the United States, Latin America, and Europe. He has exhibited his works in the Art Miami with Praxis Gallery every year from 1994 to 2006, where his works have been acquired by American and European collectors. He is quoted by Laura Meyers in her review of art gallerists as one of the "IT" artists that opened up Mexican contemporary art to the international fair scene.[11] In 2006, Cortazar drew himself from the commercial market to focus his production of two academic projects in collaboration with museums in Mexico.

Collections

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Roberto Cortazar's works are in public and private collections; he is one of the few contemporary artists included in the National Heritage "La Coleccion".[12] Eugenio Lopez Alonso bought a Cortázar as his first painting in 1990[13] and has since built Colección Jumex, one of the largest and most prominent collections in the world.[14]

Publications

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  • Los Desmembrados Según Orozco (Dismemberment according to Orozco). National Museum of Art. National Institute of Fine Arts Publishing, 2009.
  • "Saturn in the World of the Parricides". Mexico. Landucci, Editores, 2005.
  • Roberto Cortázar: 344 Figures and One in One Space. Gomez, Edward M. México. Landucci Editores, 2001.
  • Postmodernity and Romanticism. Roberto Cortázar. National Council for Culture and the Arts. National Institute of Fine Arts, 1995.

References

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  1. ^ "Roberto Cortazar". RoGallery. Retrieved 31 March 2026.
  2. ^ Roberto Cortazar Archived 2011-09-28 at the Wayback Machine, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico.
  3. ^ Museo Amparo. "Roberto Cortazar". Saturno en el Mundo de los Parricidas. Museo Amparo. Archived from the original on 14 May 2008. Retrieved 4 September 2011.
  4. ^ Museum of Contemporary Art, MARCO. "Roberto Cartázar". Saturn in the world of Parricides. Archived from the original on 1 February 2010.
  5. ^ MOMA. "Jose C. Orozco". The Collection. Oxford University Press.
  6. ^ McMasters, Merry. "Roberto Cortázar externa en el Munal su diálogo con un clásico". La Jornada.
  7. ^ Museo Dolores Olmedo. "Corpus Et Anima… Roberto Cortázar en el Dolores Olmedo". Archived from the original on 21 August 2011.
  8. ^ Gomez, Edward M. "Biography".
  9. ^ Gomez, Edward M. (10 October 1999). "Roberto Cortazar; A Portraitist of Consciousness". New York Times.
  10. ^ the Master: Cortazar's Variations on Orozco's Themes.
  11. ^ Meyers, Laura (July 2002). "Contemporary Mexican Art gains momentum in global art scene; leaving borders behind, Mexican galleries and artists have burst onto the international art scene". Art News.
  12. ^ Lozano, Luis Martin; Magdalena Zavala (2006). Landucci (ed.). La Coleccion. Hong Kong: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. p. 486. ISBN 970-9703-76-5.
  13. ^ Nicholson, Louise (2008). "Creating a scene: Eugenio Lopez Alonso is the creator of Coleccion Jumex in Mexico City, probably the most influential collection of contemporary art in Latin America". Apollo Magazine Ltd.
  14. ^ Kaufman, David (6 January 2010). "Mexico City's Jumex Art Collection". Time Magazine (January). Archived from the original on 10 January 2010.
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