Antonio M. Ruíz (b.

Texcoco, Mexico State Texcoco de Mora () is a city located in the State of Mexico, 25 km northeast of Mexico City. Texcoco de Mora is the municipal seat of the municipality of Texcoco. In the pre-Hispanic era, this was a major Aztec city on the shores of La ...

, September 2, 1892 – d. Mexico City, October 9, 1964), was a Mexican fine art

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

and scenic designer otherwise known by his childhood nickname "El Corzo" or "El Corcito" (diminutive) which came about due to his resemblance to a popular Spanish bullfighter or torero.

Personal life

Ruíz was born in

Texcoco, Mexico Texcoco de Mora () is a city located in the State of Mexico, 25 km northeast of Mexico City. Texcoco de Mora is the municipal seat of the municipality of Texcoco. In the pre-Hispanic era, this was a major Aztec city on the shores of Lak ...

to a physician (father) and concert pianist (mother). His grandfather was a painter as well. Ruíz and his family moved to Mexico City in his childhood and he spent most of his adult life there. Both his mother and father died when he was young, so he turned to education as his support. Ruíz met Mereced Pérez Correa in 1925 and proposed but her father shipped her off to New York. This is what led to Antonio's trip to the United States of America where he worked in

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

designing sets. When Merced returned to Mexico in 1927 Antonio returned as well. He married Merced in 1927 and lived in Villa de Guadalupe with his wife and two daughters: Marcela and Vilma. Better friends of him were

Frida Kahlo Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (; 6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country's popular culture, ...

Juan O'Gorman Juan O'Gorman (July 6, 1905 – January 17, 1982) was a Mexican painter and architect. Early life and family Juan O'Gorman was born on 6 July 1905 in Coyoacán, then a village to the south of Mexico City and now a borough of the Federal Distri ...

,''“El Corcito” Antonio Ruíz''
(Spanish), sepiensa.org.mx.

Gabriel Fernández Ledesma Gabriel Fernández Ledesma (May 30, 1900 – August 26, 1983) was a Mexican painter, printmaker, sculptor, graphic artist, writer and teacher. He began his career working with artist Roberto Montenegro then moved into publishing and education ...

and

Miguel Covarrubias Miguel Covarrubias, also known as José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud (22 November 1904 — 4 February 1957) was a Mexican painter, caricaturist, illustrator, ethnologist and art historian. Along with his American colleague Matthew W. Stirling, ...

. Ruiz had a

cerebral hemorrhage Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. It is one kind of bleed ...

in 1961 and died in Mexico City in 1964.

Education

At first, Ruiz was sent to a religious boarding school in Morelia but then studied architecture and painting at the

Academy of San Carlos The Academy of San Carlos ( es, Academia de San Carlos) is located at 22 Academia Street in just northeast of the main plaza of Mexico City. It was the first major art academy and the first art museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1781 as th ...

, now the National School of Arts, at the age of 17 in 1914. He studied with

Manuel Rodríguez Lozano Manuel Rodríguez Lozano (December 4, 1896 – March 27, 1971) was a List of Mexican artists, Mexican painter, known for his “melancholy” depiction of Mexico rather than the more dominant political or festive one of the Mexican muralism movem ...

Julio Castellanos Julio Castellanos González (b. Mexico City, October 3, 1905 – d. Mexico City, July 16, 1947) was a Mexican painter and engraver. Biography Castellanos matriculated the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1918, where he studied under Saturni ...

, Rufino Tamayo,

Agustín Lazo Agustín is a Spanish given name and sometimes a surname. It is related to Augustín. People with the name include: Given name * Agustín (footballer), Spanish footballer * Agustín Calleri (born 1976), Argentine tennis player * Agustín Cár ...

, Luis Ortiz Monasterio,

and

Carlos Mérida Carlos Mérida (December 2, 1891 – December 21, 1985) was a Guatemalan artist who was one of the first to fuse European modern painting to Latin American themes, especially those related to Guatemala and Mexico. He was part of the Mexican mura ...

. He also studied at the

Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes The Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL, en, National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature), located in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, is the Mexican institution in charge of coordinating artistic and cultural ...

and the

Escuela Nacional Preparatoria The Escuela Nacional Preparatoria ( en, National Preparatory High School) (ENP), the oldest senior High School system in Mexico, belonging to the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), opened its doors on February 1, 1868. It was founded ...

. By his own account, he was mainly influenced by Saturnino Herrán and

Germán Gedovius Germán Gedovius (1867–1937) was a Mexican painter. Biography Gedovius was born in Mexico City in 1867 before moving as an infant with his family to San Luis Potosí. When he was sixteen years old he returned to Mexico City to attend the Acade ...

as they were his favorite teachers at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. Later he drew on inspiration from

Flemish art The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...

ists and

. He also delved into some

surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

at one point, showed by his involvement in the Mexican International Surrealist Exhibition of 1940.

Career

During his time at

he was a draftsman in the Ministry of Communications, the Federal Railroad Administration (in the Department of Libraries and Graphic Services) and then in the Ministry of Public Works. Ruíz spent most of his career teaching. From 1921 to 1924, he taught drawing in primary schools in

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

. He also worked as a Professor at the School of Engineering and Architecture in Mexico City. He was a Professor of Perspective and Scenography at the

. In 1942 he began to actually teach fine arts at

Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" La Esmeralda or Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado (ENPEG) (English: National School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking) is a Mexican art school founded in 1927 and located in Mexico City. History The history of the ENPEG start ...

when he took over as director. He was never very much involved in the Mexican muralism movement sponsored by José Vasconcelos because of his career as a teacher. In 1941 Ruiz collaborated with other various artists from all different forms like the composer

Manuel Ponce Manuel María Ponce Cuéllar (8 December 1882 – 24 April 1948) was a Mexican composer active in the 20th century. His work as a composer, music educator and scholar of Mexican music connected the concert scene with a mostly forgotten traditio ...

, the painter Angel Zárraga, journalist

Vito Alessio Robles General Vito Alessio Robles (August 14, 1879June 11, 1957) was a Mexican military officer, engineer, writer, journalist, diplomat, and academic who participated in the Mexican Revolution. He was one of the country's leading historians, as well as ...

and

Rodolfo Usigli Rodolfo Usigli (November 17, 1905 – June 18, 1979) was a Mexican playwright, essayist and diplomat. He has been called "the father of Mexican theater" and "playwright of the Mexican Revolution." In recognition of his work to articulate a natio ...

on a publication called ''Mexican Cultural Weekly''. Ruíz has had many exhibits in the United States: (New York,

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, Washington, D.C., Chicago,

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, and

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

) along with exhibits in Mexico City, Toronto,

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

, and

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...

. His exhibits in New York include the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, the Valentine Gallery, and the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

. Ruíz showed ''The Orator,'' ''The Dream of Malinche'' during the International Surrealist Exhibition held at the

Galería de Arte Mexicano The Galería de Arte Mexicano (GAM) was founded by Carolina Amor, Carolina in 1935 and directed by Inés Amor, her sister from 1936 until the 80's, in Mexico City and has been the first gallery of Mexican art. The gallery building was the first buil ...

in Mexico City. Critics called his two works "stylistic examples of magical realism". This exhibition was organized by big names such as Wolfgang Paalen,

André Breton André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...

and

César Moro César Moro (August 31, 1903 – January 10, 1956) is the pseudonym of Alfredo Quíspez Asín Mas, a Peruvian poet and painter. Most of his poetic works are written in French; he was the only Latin American poet included in the 1920s and '30s su ...

. Currently, eight of his paintings reside in the Museum of Finance and Public Credit in the Heritage Collection. Although a very influential artist, Ruíz never had a large stand-alone exhibit because he was a very slow painter. He would take his time, sometimes only putting out three or four paintings a year. This can be attributed to his immense attention to detail in his paintings. Style-wise, Ruíz was a painter of everyday life. Works like ''The Bicycle Race, Texcoco'' and ''The Shop-Window'' are examples of this. He also spent some time working with surrealism, as shown by his paintings ''The Dream of Malinche'' and ''The Orator''. He was very concerned with detail and had a very specific style to his paintings. Somber was not his tone though, as he often injected humor into his paintings. As Helm puts it, Ruíz "sees the comedy without losing sight of the tragedy". Unlike the muralists of his time, Ruíz created small canvas paintings, although at one point he did create a mural using egg tempera for the moving-picture operators in Mexico City. In 1963 Ruíz retired from professorship and was celebrated in the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana's retrospective of his work.

Scenography

As a scenic designer, he went to

and worked for Universal Studies as an assistant film-set designer from 1925 to 1927 and again in 1936. He then continued his work in Mexico by creating designs for theaters, ballets, and films. Ruíz worked with Julio Castellanos on decor for

Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...

's "Different" in 1934. He also worked on scenery for "

El gesticulador ''El gesticulador'' (''The Impostor'') is a 1938 play by Mexican dramatist Rodolfo Usigli. Plot The protagonist, César Rubio, is an unemployed professor who, in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, settles with his family in a small town i ...

" in the

Palacio de Bellas Artes The Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) is a prominent cultural center in Mexico City. It has hosted notable events in music, dance, theatre, opera and literature in Mexico and has held important exhibitions of painting, sculpture and p ...

1947 opening season of Teatro Mexicano. Ruiz contributed as a set and costume designer for the theater production ''Anfitrión 38'', created by

Julio Bracho Julio Bracho Gavilán (17 July 1909 – 26 April 1978) was a Mexican film director and screenwriter. Bracho was born as ninth of eleven children of Julio Bracho y Zuloaga and his wife Luz Pérez Gavilán. His sister Guadalupe Bracho Pérez- ...

. His work in theater and scenography led him to producing a ballet score in 1949 called "The Mermaid and the Sea". He continued to work on set designing up until his death.

Collaboration with Miguel Covarrubias

gave the impetus to his six mobile murals, titled ''Pageant of the Pacific''. (Spanish), self-description, Exibición de la Colección Acervo Patrimonial. Ruíz was assistant to Covarrubias in painting the six murals entitled ''The Fauna and Flora of the Pacific'', ''Peoples'', ''Art and Culture'', ''Economy'', ''Native Dwellings'', and Native Means of Transportation. They were created for the Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) in 1939, later they were moved to the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...

in New York. All but "Art and Culture" were returned to

and displayed in the World Trade Club. That piece was lost and still no one knows of its whereabouts. Today ''The Flora and Fauna of the Pacific'' is being displayed at the

M. H. de Young Memorial Museum ( ; ; pl. ; ; 1512, from Middle French , literally "my lord") is an honorific title that was used to refer to or address the eldest living brother of the king in the French royal court. It has now become the customary French title of resp ...

in San Francisco.

Work at Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda"

In 1943 he followed Guillermo Ruiz on his chair as director of the

. Ruíz reformed the "Esmeralda" basically, so that it became an official art school of the

Secretaría de Educación Pública The Mexican Secretariat of Public Education ( in Spanish ''Secretaría de Educación Pública'', ''SEP'') is a federal government authority with cabinet representation and the responsibility for overseeing the development and implementation of ...

.''Boletín de la Biblioteca de las Artes - Al rescate de la memoria artística de México''
(Spanish), p. 11. Previously it was the School of Wood Carving of the Secretariat of Public Education. Ruíz said this about "La Esmeralda": "This school's slogan is based on the present spirit of national reconstruction, and for that very reason it is, and must be, work and study, indispensable factors for spurring on a spiritual resurgence in Mexican Arts."

''El sueño de la Malinche''

''El sueño de la Malinche'' or ''The Dream of Malinche'' is one of Ruíz's better known works that was painted in 1939. His subject, La Malinche was the mistress of

Hernán Cortés Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca (; ; 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish ''conquistador'' who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of w ...

as well as his translator and guide during Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. She is a symbol of the indigenous people but also of the betrayal of her people, and the main reason why the

conquistador Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, O ...

s were able to defeat the indigenous people. In the painting, La Malinche lies sleeping on a modern bed, with a cracked and distressed wall behind her and a blanket drawn up around her. On the blanket lies a Mexican landscape with a colonial church as the highest point and residential areas spreading down the hills. Edward Lucie-Smith's view of the implication of this painting is that "Mexico's Indian past still slumbers beneath the trappings of the European present."

Selected works

* ''Alegoria teatral'' (1923) * ''El organillero'' (1925) * ''Woman Ironing'' (1928) * ''The Lottery Ticket'' (1932) * ''El Sueño de la Malinche'' (''The Dream of Malinche'') (1939) * ''Schoolchildren on Parade'' (1936) * ''The Shop-Window'' (1937) * ''Verano'' (1937) * ''The Bicycle Race, Texcoco'' (1938) * ''Serenata'' (1938) * ''Leader Making a Speech'' (1939) * ''Marionettes'' (1939) * ''The New Rich'' (1941) * ''Estreno de la pulqueria'' (1941) * ''Las Changuitas'' (1943) * ''Fotografia de un escenario teatral suyo'' (1946) * ''Felicitation para 1947'' (1947) * ''Indolandia indivisa y libre'' (1953) * ''Self-Portrait'' (1956) * ''The Soprano'' (1949)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ruiz, Antonio 20th-century Mexican painters Mexican male painters Mexican muralists Mexican scenic designers People from Texcoco, State of Mexico 1892 births 1964 deaths National Autonomous University of Mexico alumni Academic staff of Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" 20th-century Mexican male artists