José Luis Cuevas is a modernist

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 painter and sculptor from Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

. Born in 1934, Cuevas derived most of his training outside of the academies. He is considered to be one of the artists from the 1950s in the Rupture Generation that was departing from the politicized and stylized mural school

Mexican Muralism

Mexican muralism is a Mexican art movement. The most important period of this movement took place primarily from the 1920s to the 1960s, though it exerted an influence on later generations of Mexican artists...

 of Orozco

José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco was a Mexican social realist painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others...

 and Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...

. More introspective and morose, his style recalls a linerazed and antichromatic Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...

. (Also see Rafael Coronel

Rafael Coronel

Rafael Coronel is a painter from Mexico. He was the son-in-law of Diego Rivera. His representational paintings have a melancholic sobriety, and include faces from the past great masters, often floating in a diffuse haze.There are some paintings of his own in Mexico and in other countries...

.)

Cuevas was Drawing Prize at the V Biennial of São Paulo (1959), the National Prize of Science and Art of México (1981). He wrote a weekly column in Excélsior

Excélsior

Excélsior is a daily newspaper, founded by Rafael Alducin and published in Mexico City since 1917.During the 1950s and 1960s, the newspaper's editorial stance was of a relatively liberal bent, under the editorship of Julio Scherer...

, one of the main Mexico City newspapers. The José Luis Cuevas Museum

José Luis Cuevas Museum

The José Luis Cuevas Museum and Church of Santa Inés are located just off the main plaza, or Zocalo of Mexico City and started out as parts of the same convent complex. The museum was founded in what in colonial times was the residential portion of the convent of Santa Inés . This convent was...

 in México City is named after him.

See also

• Pedro Coronel
  Pedro Coronel
  Pedro Coronel Arroyo was a Mexican abstract painter, sculptor, draughtsman, and engraver.-Biography:...
  
  
• Arnold Belkin
  Arnold Belkin
  Arnold Belkin was a Mexican painter and mural artist. Born in Canada, he moved to Mexico to be closer to the Mexican artists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Siquerios. In the '50s he befriended the latter, collaborating with him on two murals in Mexico City...
  
  
• Francis Bacon
  Francis Bacon
  Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...