José Chávez Morado was born in Silao, near the city of Guanajuato, where Diego Rivera was born, and like Rivera he is a well known and highly regarded painter and sculptor who became most famous for the murals he painted in Mexico in the first half of the 20th Century. In 1925, young José took a train to the United States to find work. He worked odd jobs in Canada and all the way to Alaska. During a stay in Los Angeles he started studying drawing at the Choinard School of Arts. He also met Jose Clemente Orozco at the Pomona College. In 1931 he was awarded a grant by the government of Guanajuato to study at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas under Francisco Díaz de León, Bulmaro Guzmán and Emilio Amero. In 1935 he married a German exile living in Mexico by the name Olga Kostakowsky. In 1937 he joined the communist party and a year later he becomes a member of the Taller de Gráfica Popular with Dolores Alvarez Bravo, Carlos Alvarado Lang, Isidoro Ocampo and Maria Izquierdo among others. His first solo show was held in 1944 at the Galeria de Arte Mexicano. In 1949 he traveled to Europe to study mosaics and a year later he returned to Mexico to build some of the most beautiful mosaic murals in the country. His most famous works can be seen at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, the Quetzalcoatl mural at the Centro Medico Siglo XXI, the tower in the patio of the Museo Nacional de Antropologia e Historia and his own personal favorite, the murals at the Alhondiga de Granaditas in Guanajuato. He started working with sculpture in 1960 and created several monumetal works in bronze. He was awarded the Premio Nacional de las Artes in 1974 and in 1985 an honorary degree from the UNAM. He died in December 2, 2002.
