Mexican Artists

- which artist do you feel a connection with?

We'd like your input in ranking Mexican artists. It's not to say that any one artist is better than an other. Just think about which artist and their work connects with you and let us know via the form at the bottom of this page.

To start the dialogue, I'll put forward my personal favorites. All of whom I connect with in different ways. Here they are..

Frida Kahlo

Frida. What a personality she had, and that same personality is right there in her paintings. She is loved the world-over for wearing her heart on her sleeve in painting such personal artworks.

Diego Rivera

Mexico's best-known muralist has a huge legacy of works around Mexico. His murals are beautifully painted, his figures being very sculptural and having a real sense of weight. And the wonderful thing about Rivera's murals of course, is their subjects: Aspects of Mexican history.

Luis Barragan

Okay so Barragan is known as an architect rather than an artist, but the ‘archi’ in architect just means ‘art’ and his buildings are certainly artistic.

When I was a student, there was ONE book in the Architecture School library that kept drawing me back time and time again. It was too heavy for me to carry home and, besides, I was supposed to be doing other projects! Instead I spent hours sitting on the library floor lost in the pages of this book. Absolutely infatuated with the stunning, saturated color on clean architectural forms. I had discovered the work of Luis Barragan.

Nothing in European modernism called out to me the way that the modernism of Luis Barragan did. Luis Barragan brought modernism to Mexico, and brought color to modernism.

Octavio Ocampo

Ocampo's paintings are all about metamorphasis. My favorite of his works is of the profile of an old man with white hair, but within this profile is the image of a young man with sombrero on a horse and a young woman lying down near a river. It's a beautiful and evocative painting.

Return from Mexican Artists to Mexico Culture