Arturo Rivera
(1945 - 2020)

Born in Mexico City in 1945. He studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas, Academia de San Carlos (1963-1968) and later learned printing techiniques at the City Lit Art School of London. During a stay in New york he worked with the surrealist painter Max Zimmermann who convinced him to travel to Munich at Kunstakademie.
In 1995 in the Exhibit "Weddings from Heaven and Hell" a series of 15 years of uninterrupted atristic labor from a very impressive figuratie painter redifined fantastic realism. Arturo Rivera paints interiors, backgrounds, athmospheres, in search of portraying vivid characters through all visible and hidden physical, phsycological or cultural angles. He paints the natural soul as if it were detaching from a real or imaginative figure.



He exposes through his art the horrors of the world, of nature, of dreams and imagination as well as painting portraits, self portraits, characters, landscapes, and objects of classic beauty into his intricate compositions. His main materials are acrylic, watercolor, caseine, graphite, compte crayons, oil pastels, egg tempera, and creta paint.


He usually works in series. From 1980 to 1985 a period he calls "El Rastro del Dolor" (The Remains of Pain) he presents the nude human body, fractioned and penetrates down to it's muscular structure. From 1989 to 1990, the story of the eye is his subject. In reference to Georges Bataille's book, he creates a series of 24 pieces, each one related to another through the theme of the eye. Finally from 1991 up to now he has taken biblical themes from the old and new testaments as his subject and selected friends as models to whom he gives the roles of Eve, Judith, St. John and Christ.
In 1994 he was awarded an honorable mention by MARCO (The Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey). His work has been exhibited throughout Mexico and abroad (Francis Gallery NYC, Jack Gallery SoHo NYC, Walton Galley of Chicago, Haus der Kunst of Munich, etc.).
Arturo Rivera died October 2020.