Abstract artist Manuel Felguérez dies of COVID-19

Mexican artist Manuel Felguérez has died at 91. He is considered one of the key figures in contemporary art in Mexico.

The painter and artist died after he contracted COVID-19 . After he tested positive, he refused to be hospitalized and died at his Mexico City home last night.

According to artnet , Manuel Felguérez was “best known for his involvement in the postwar Generación de la Ruptura group. In making Constructivist and Cubist-inspired sculptures and paintings , Felguérez confronted the dominant style of such Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco, with work focused on aesthetic and formal experimentation rather than political or social agendas.”

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Felguérez studied under French-Russian Cubist artist Ossip Zadkine at the Grande Chaumière Academ y in Paris and although his art was not accepted in Mexico at the early stages of his career, so “he turned to Europe to fully explore what he termed “multiple space” painting.”

Felguérez opened the Manuel Felguérez Abstract Art Museum in Zacatecas in 1998, where 100 of his paintings are exhibited along with 110 works by other Mexican and international abstract artists .

Fellow artists, art critics, academics, and government officials have lamented Felguérez’s death.

At the moment, authorities won’t be able to organize a public event in memory of the painter due to the COVID-19 pandemic but once the critical phase of the pandemic is over, culture institutions will likely organize a public event.

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