José Luis Cuevas (February 26, 1934 – July 3, 2017) was a Mexican artist who worked as a painter, writer, draftsman, engraver, illustrator, and printmaker. Cuevas was one of the first to challenge the then dominant Mexican muralism movement as a prominent member of the Generación de la Ruptura (English: Breakaway Generation). He was a mostly self-taught artist, whose styles and influences are moored to the darker side of life, often depicting distorted figures and the debasement of humanity. He remained a controversial figure throughout his career, not only for his often shocking images, but also for his opposition to writers and artists who he felt participated in corruption or created only for money. In 1992, the José Luis Cuevas Museum was opened in the historic center of Mexico City holding most of his work and his personal art collection. His grandson Alexis de Chaunac is a contemporary artist.
Biography Childhood José Luis Cuevas was born on February 26, 1934, to a middle-class family in Mexico City. He was born on the upper floor of the paper and pencil factory belonging to his paternal grandfather, Adalberto Cuevas.
When he was ten years old, he began studies at the National School of Painting and Sculpture "La Esmeralda", and he also started to illustrate newspapers and books. However, he was forced to abandon his studies in 1946 when he contracted rheumatic fever. The illness left him bedridden for two years. During this time, he learned engraving work taught by Lola Cueto of Mexico City College.
Early career At age fourteen, he rented a space on Donceles street to use as a studio instead of returning to school as his poor health meant that did not know how long he might live. He decided it would be better to dedicate himself to his art. Cuevas learned how to horse back ride and basket weave for money. He worked on illustrations for The News, and despite his lack of formal training, he taught art history classes at Coronet Hall Institute. One element of his training was the opportunity to visit the La Castaneda mental hospital where his brother worked to draw the patients.
Generación de la Ruptura Cuevas was sometimes described as vain, a pathological liar and a hypochondriac, obsessed with sickness and death, especially his own. Writer René Avilés Fabila once said that “The greatest love of José Luis Cuevas is named José Luis Cuevas, because he is an artist more in love with himself than with his work.” The reason for this quote is that he has done so many self-portraits that it is like having a large number of mirrors. Cuevas stated that he did not believe that he was vain and says that idea started in 1955 when he decided to take a picture of himself every day, which he continued to do up to the end of his life. He was one of the most photographed contemporary artists of Mexico. One ludicrous story states that he visited a “vampire brothel” where they scratch and paw at customers. Other story relates him to a 70-year-old woman named Gloria who he tried to seduce and another one that Marlene Dietrich threw herself at him. He admitted to being a bit paranoid and defensive, concerned about being cast in a negative light. He claimed Julio Scherer García as an enemy for interfering with his writing career. He also had feuds with painter Rufino Tamayo. He claimed that José Chávez Morado, Guillermo González Camarena and the "Frente Popular de Artes Plasticas" were envious of him and that they accused him of working with the CIA in the 1950s when he was coming out after mainstream artists. Even in his final years, he made deferences by opening his museum to all of his friends but those he considers enemies were not permitted inside.
In the 1960s, he went to Morocco to study Islamic art, meeting painter Francis Bacon in Tangiers. He became an atheist after the death of his mother in the 1970s. From 1976 to 1979, he “self-exiled”, leaving Mexico for France, working on various books, serigraphs and lithographs for publication. When he returned to Mexico, he presented the exhibition “José Luis Cuevas. El regreso de otro hijo pródigo.” (José Luis Cuevas. The return of another prodigal son).
Despite his predictions that he would live to over a hundred because various tarot readings had told him so, Cuevas died on July 3, 2017, in Mexico City at the age of 83.
Marriage
Cuevas married his first wife, Bertha Riestra, in 1961. He met Bertha at the La Castaneda hospital while she was there doing community service and painting. Her parents did not attend the wedding as they did not approve of him since he was an artist. Despite being married, he gained a reputation as a womanizer, nicknamed “gato macho” (male cat) or seducer of women, which he took advantage of to promote himself. In a Mexico City newspaper column written by him, he claimed he had over 650 erotic encounters. He states that Bertha was not allowed the same freedom and that she never knew about his affairs despite his writings about them. He and Bertha had three daughters, Mariana, Ximena and María Jose. In 2000, Berta Riestra, his wife and, at the time, the director of the José Luis Cuevas Museum, died due to breast cancer and leukemia. The following year, he met Beatriz del Carmen Bazán, whom he married in 2003 at the museum.
Cuevas and his wife both lived in the San Ángel neighborhood of Mexico City. The house was built for Cuevas in the 1970s by architects Abraham Zabludovsky and Teodoro González de León in a style reminiscent of Luis Barragán. The walls are tones of gray with very straight lines. The interior is minimalist with paintings by the artist on the walls and wood furniture with Mexican textiles. While the house is clean and orderly, the space dedicated as his studio is messy, strewn with books, old machinery, a telescope, mirrors, many photographs and more.
Exhibitions
Within a career that spanned over seventy years, Cuevas was a painter, writer, draftsman, engraver, illustrator and printmaker. There have been solo exhibitions od Cuevas's work in museums and galleries throughout the world. His first exhibition was when he was only fourteen at the Seminario Axiologico but no one came, the works came off the walls and were stepped on. His first successful individual exhibition was at Mexico City's Galería Prisse in 1953, when he was nineteen. In 1954, he meets the critic Jose Gomez-Sicre who invites him to exhibit at the Panamerican Union in Washington, DC. This, his first U.S. exhibition, sold out opening night and resulted in interviews with Time and the Washington Post, which called him a “golden boy,” opening doors and helping to sell his paintings. In 1955, he participated in the first Salón de Arte Libre organized by Galería Proteo, where he met David Alfaro Siqueiros. During the rest of the 1950s, he exhibited in Havana, Caracas, Lima and Buenos Aires, where he met Jorge Luis Borges, Rafael Squirru and Alberto Greco.
In the 1960 he exhibited at the David Herbert Gallery, when the NY Times compared him to Picasso. In 1961, two of his works at the Galería del L’Oblisco in Rome, Los Funerales de un Dictador and La Caída de Franco caused a diplomatic conflict with Spain that asked the images to be removed. In 1962, he exhibited a series of works based on a sculpture by Tilman Riemenschneider he saw in Munich. Cuevas's other exhibitions from this period include one at the Silvan Simone Gallery in 1967.
During the 1970s, he exhibited 72 self-portraits at the Centro Cultural Universitario at UNAM, and exhibited other works at the San Francisco Museum of Art, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Caracas, Phoenix Art Museum, the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City. In 1976, he had four women tattooed with original designs of his own making, so that the art “would grow old with him” This despite the fact that tattoos were illegal in Mexico at the time. In 1979 Jose Luis exhibits 50 watercolors and drawings along with illustrated letters at Tasende Gallery, La Jolla, California.
In 1981, he opened the exhibit "Signs of Life" which contained a vial with his semen and an electrocardiogram taken while he was making love. He stated in the exhibition's brochure that he would impregnate any woman that asked him to do so, but the Secretaría de Gobernación made him to remove the brochure because it was then-considered as act of prostitution. In 1982, fourteen galleries in Mexico City, Barcelona, Paris and others held a simultaneous exhibits of “Marzo. Mes de José Luis Cuevas” ("March. Month of Jose Luis Cuevas.") From 1984 to 1988, a series of 50 large format drawings called “Intolerance” toured universities and museums in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Europe. These drawings were the result of Jose Tasende's gift to Cuevas of the book "The Witches' Advocate" by Gustav Henningsen. In 1985 exhibits with Henry Moore and Eduardo Chillida in the exhibition Figure Space Image at Tasende Gallery, La Jolla, California. The illustrated letters he wrote to his dealer JM Tasende during his exile from Mexico are exhibited at Tasende Gallery prior to becoming part of the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
In 1991 "Celebrating 25 Years with Jose Luis Cuevas" opens at Tasende Gallery, La Jolla. He created a Talavera mural which was placed at the Zona Rosa neighborhood in 1995. In 1997 he exhibits at Tasende Gallery, West Hollywood, California. In 1998, he exhibited “Retrospectiva de Dibujo y Escultura” at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. In 1999, the Pablo Picasso Foundation presented the exhibition “José Luis Cuevas. Obra Gráfica".
In 2001, he donated a sculpture called “Figura Obscena” (Obscene Figure) to the city of Colima. This sculpture became the center of a scandal in 2006. Other exhibitions from the 2000s include in 2005 "Jose Luis Cuevas in Drawing and Sculpture" at the Latin American Art Museum in Long Beach, California. "Selected Drawings and Watercolors" Tasende Gallery, West Hollywood, California. In 2006, he inaugurated the Paseo Escultórico Nezahualcóyotl with a sculpture named after his wife called “Carmen.” Retrospective Exhibition at the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City in 2008. “Exposición Siameses 50 Años de la Plástica del Maestro José Luis Cuevas” in 2009 and 2011 and “Dibujo y Escultura” in 2010. He continued to actively exhibit his work until his death, especially in Mexico.
Publications
By the age of fourteen, Cuevas had illustrated numerous periodicals and books. In 1957, he went to Philadelphia to illustrate the book The World of Kafka and Cuevas for Falcon Prest Publishers. In the late 1950s, he began to write on cultural topics for the Novedades de México publication, where he referred to the then mural artists establishment such as Diego Rivera as the ("Nopal Cactus Curtain") and also advocated for greater artistic freedom. This philosophy inspired the founding in 1960 of the group Nueva Presencia, which he joined for a brief time. The group promoted individual expression and figurative art reflecting the contemporary human condition.
In the 1960s, his publications included Recollections of Childhood (1963), Cuevas-Chareton (1966), a book of lithographs made at the Tamarind Workshop in Los Angeles inspired by the Marquis de Sade and Homage to Quevedo an album of thirteen lithographs dedicated to Francisco de Quevedo.
In 1970, he presented Crime by Cuevas at the Primera Bienal del Grabado Latinoamericano in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The lithographic series called Cuevas Comedies was published in 1972, inspired by San Francisco. He “self-exiled” to France where he exhibited at the Modern Art Museum in Paris and the Chartres Cathedral and worked on several books, serigraphs and lithographs in works called “Cuaderno de París” and “La Renaudiere.” The first was honored at the Book Fair in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1978.