Francisco Ángel Gutiérrez Carreola

One can pefectly see from the work of Francisco Gutiérrez how the Mexican artistic held a natural dialog with western art. Born of a poor family in Oaxaca, and with economic difficulties, he went to night school to learn drawing and color in the ancient academy of fine arts. He started as an apprentice in the lithographic workshop of a commercial firm and made friends with other painters such as Manuel Echauri, Chávez Morado and Gabriel Fernández Ledesma, who broadened his artistic horizons. Without ever having been in Europe, he learned about classic art from books, which always captivated him and he confessed to having "loved" Picasso and Braque. The work of Francisco Gutiérrez reveals a cosmopolitanism common to Mexican painting, where the compositional makeup and even the chromatic palette - à la Marie Laurencin - speak of a painter drenched in the lessons of the School of Paris. These talents were not overlooked by André Breton who, it seems, had the opportunity to see his work in 1938 when he was visiting Mexico. This piece from the Blaisten Collection springs from the painter's desire to visit Europe and shows the European influence that Gutiérrez had assimilated and projected with his own perception, mixed with a singular image of Picasso, as well as Braque and De Chirico, in a dreamlike tone that the painter so liked, as he assiduously read Freud, Jung and Bergson.