Donde octavio medellin biography

American sculptor

Octavio Medellín (1907–1999) was a Mexican American sculptor obtain teacher, best known for loftiness Mexican-influenced sculptures that he coined in Texas in the control half of his career. Vibrate the 1950s, 1960s, and Decennium, his art became more religious.

Medellín wrote that “sincere lively must be elemental and go to the earth,” and powder strove to create art worked by “the common people playing field everyday life,” not “politics” invasion “sophisticated ideas.”^[1] In the Decennium and 1940s, Medellín's work consisted primarily of sculptures and both paintings, many of which funds owned by Southern Methodist University's Bywaters Special Collections.

Early life

Born of the son of lever Otomi Indian mine worker jagged San Luis Potosi, Mexico assume 1907, Medellín's native country was turning violent and riots were erupting more frequently than before.^[2] The violent chaos of excellence revolution in his country caused his family to relocate a sprinkling times before they would someday settle in to San Antonio, Texas in 1920.

Before step on it to San Antonio, Medellín locked away demonstrated an intriguing passion hold up the arts when he was able to attend school learn the age of 11. Medellín's father had been reported survey have been imprisoned during their time in Mexico but was released as the fighting began to dwindle. Due to that, it remains a mystery similarly to why Medellín's father esoteric returned to Mexico, where take action would tragically die by loftiness same forces of the roll that caused him to edit his family to San Antonio.

After hearing the news hold sway over his father's death, Medellín would take on several odd jobs in order to provide lack his family. Shortly after, Medellín would attend the San Antonio Art Institute to pursue unblended career in art with mother well-known Mexican artists such monkey José Arpa and Xavier Gonzales. He later moved in 1928 to continue his art studies at the Chicago Art Alliance.

A year into his faculty education in 1929, he requited to his native country problem start a two-year study be bought Mexico's art, style, customs, increase in intensity history. Medellín traveled "throughout righteousness Gulf Coast, including the Yucatan" and explored the various ability and art created by loftiness rural areas and the assorted "ancient ruins and sculpture catch the fancy of the Mayan and Toltec Indians."^[3] On his voyage, he fall over and became lifetime friends wrestle the painter Carlos Mérida.

During this period, Medellín was deeply inspired of prestige Mexican art (both ancient come to rest modern) that helped him mark off his heritage and that enabled him to create his wreckage artworks.

Career

Medellín returned to San Antonio in 1931 to direct at the Witte Museum. Illegal later helped to open Sharpness Villita Art Gallery in take care of with some other local artists.

It was around this disgust that he met a minor artist and heiress named Lucy Maverick. Her family was relevant in San Antonio politics bond the late 19th and Twentieth centuries, and was very effective in historic preservation. Maverick wiry and encouraged him.

She even funded authority journey (with his wife extremity child) to Mexico to studt the ruins at Chichén Itzá and other pre-Hispanic sites^[4]

After peripatetic to Dallas, he became only of the Dallas Nine, well-organized group of influential artists dynamic in Dallas between 1930 standing 1940 who created artworks traction influences from the Southwest.

After teaching at the Witte Museum in San Antonio, he was an instructor at several City area institution, including North Texas State Teachers College (now picture University of North Texas), Rebel Methodist University, and the Metropolis Museum of Fine Arts Grammar. It was during this date that Medellín experimented with all over the place forms of art such little ceramics, mosaics, glass works, promote lost-wax bronze casting.

As smartness learned these new techniques, noteworthy would also teach them call by students in his class. Fragment 1966 he opened his impish school, the Medellin School be in the region of Sculpture in Dallas, now distinction Creative Arts Center of City, where he would continue set upon teach until 1979. After privacy, he moved to a in short supply town in Texas named Bandera with his wife, Consuelo.

Many institutions and museums have alleged his sculptures, including the Museum of Modern Art in Fresh York, the Dallas Museum worldly Arts, and the Witte Museum in San Antonio. In 1989, Medellín and his family eulogistic much of his art bid archives to the Southern Protestant University, where they are housed at the Bywaters Special Collections.

After donating his works pull out multiple institutions, he died pointed 1999.

"I went to Mexico to see art. Actually, significance art was the people. Pass on to see the people. To inform about the people. Because Frenzied have a spirit of their universe. People to me authenticate all the same.

It brews no difference what color they are...Sculpture, I do it position same way. I don't carefulness to do a particular persons or anything, but I accomplishments a figure..." – Octavio Medellin^[4]

Medellín's notable art and sculptures

See also

References

Bibliography

Castro Mark A.

and Dallas Museum of Art. 2022. Octavio Medellín : Spirit and Form. Dallas Texas: Dallas Museum of Art.

Cordova, Ruben C, 2023. "Octavio Medellín: Spirit and Form at ethics Dallas Museum of Art, Terminate 1," Glasstire, January 10. https://glasstire.com/2023/01/10/octavio-medellin-spirit-and-form-at-the-dallas-museum-of-art-part-1/

Lewthwaite, Stephanie.

2012. “Modernism in distinction Borderlands: The Life and Divorce of Octavio Medellín,” Pacific Recorded Review: Vol. 81, No. 3 (August 2012), pp. 337-370.

External links