18.09.2020
09:08
The painter, printmaker and muralist exhibited at Bellas Artes in 2008. He collaborated with Siqueiros and obtained the National Prize for Sciences and Arts in 2003
October 21, 2019 Share on FacebookShare Share on TwitterTweet Share on WhatsAppShare
Last July he presented the exhibition “TODAY, Gilberto Aceves Navarro”, at the Museum of Mexico City. (PHOTO: CUARTOSCURO)
“Every time I do something, I change; I am in perpetual evolution ”, this is how the Mexican artist Gilberto Aceves Navarro, who died Sunday night at the age of 88 , referred to his work .
The National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) informed through its Twitter account of the death of Aceves Navarro, “whose legacy is essential in the contemporary art of the country.”
Aceves Navarro, born on September 24, 1931 in Mexico City, was absent from the art scene for several years due to health problems. Last July he acknowledged in an interview with the newspaper La Jornada : “I hardly see, that has greatly modified my work.”
. @ cultura_mx, through INBAL, regrets the death of master Gilberto Aceves Navarro, painter, sculptor and printmaker, whose legacy is essential in the country's contemporary art.
Our condolences to his family and artistic community.
He will say goodbye at @PalacioOficial. pic.twitter.com/ndwVWOEyFq
– National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (@bellasartesinba) October 21, 2019
However, that same table opened the exhibition Hoy, Gilberto Aceves Navarro at the Museum of Mexico City, with part of his most recent production and which was mounted thanks to the work of the foundation that bears his name, whose objective is to promote artistic education in the country.
Education was precisely one of the activities to which he dedicated great effort, as he was a well-remembered teacher in the old National School of Plastic Arts (now the School of Plastic Arts) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he gave classes from 1971 to 2012.
He never defined himself as a “common” teacher, as he tried to propose new methods to his students, as he himself explained in another interview with La Jornada , in April 2018.
His method, which he called “Let's change, please”, was captured in a book and was based, among other things, on touch.
Aceves Navarro was a teacher at UNAM for more than 40 years (PHOTO: CUARTOSCURO)
“There is a blind way of doing things, with touch and without seeing the paper. I do not teach them to draw, but to see the world with the eyes of an artist, a painter. See what they can give. It is a method that pushes them to realize themselves as individuals, not as group persons ”.
Thus spoke the artist, trained at the La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving , a member of the Generation of Rupture and assistant to David Alfaro Siqueiros in 1952 during the realization of the murals of the Rectory of the UNAM building.
Gilberto Aceves Navarro participated in more than 300 exhibitions in Mexico and abroad. One of the most important was the one that was presented from December 2008 to March 2009 at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes , as a tribute to its five decades of experience and which brought together more than 100 pieces by the painter, printmaker and muralist.
It will be in the same Palace of Fine Arts where Aceves Navarro will be fired through a tribute.
The artist, last July, during the presentation of his exhibition at the Museum of Mexico City (Photo: Cuartoscuro)
In 2003, the creator obtained the National Prize for Sciences and Arts, while in 2011 he was recognized with the Fine Arts Medal.
Aceves Navarro's work is part of important collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art, where three pieces of him were recently exhibited.
Alejandra Fraustro, Secretary of Culture, dedicated a message to the artist on her Twitter account: “Gilberto Aceves Navarro, great painter, printmaker, sculptor and above all a great Mexican master, who in his generosity knew how to give himself to form and color, to the line and the teaching of art. Rest in peace, a great of contemporary Mexican art ”.
