Collection: Jose Luis Cuevas

(1934-2017) Mexican

José Luis Cuevas is a Mexican artist who worked primarily with etchings, illustrations, sculptures, and paintings, though he is perhaps best known for his drawings. According to Cuevas, “perhaps because I was born in a paper mill and pencil factory, paper has always had a great fascination for me.” He briefly attended the eminent Mexican institution Escuela de Pintura, however Cuevas considers himself a self-taught draughtsman in search of an alternative to the Mexican Muralists and their social messages. For Cuevas, his drawings represent the isolation of man and an inability to communicate, many of his drawings featuring distorted human figures and figures transformed into animals. His work was inspired by the graphic styles of Francisco de Goya, Pablo Picasso, and José Guadalupe Posada, as well as the works of the Catalan Romanesque, 19th-century Romanticism and German Expressionism.