Manuel Felguerez

Manuel Felguérez was born in 1928 in Valparaíso, Zacatecas, Mexico. He began his artistic training in Mexico City briefly studying at the Academy of San Carlos before traveling to France to study sculpture in Paris. He later returned to Mexico and pursued academic studies in anthropology and history alongside his artistic practice. Felguérez taught at the Universidad Iberoamericana and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he was affiliated with the Institute of Aesthetic Research. He also served as a guest researcher at Harvard University and as a visiting professor at Cornell University.

Felguérez worked primarily in abstract painting, sculpture, and relief, using geometry as the basis for composition. During the 1960s, he produced large-scale relief murals and public works constructed from industrial and nontraditional materials, including metal, stone, sand, and concrete, extending abstraction into architectural space. In the early 1970s, he began using computers as part of his artistic research, applying mathematical and geometric models to analyze and generate compositional variations based on his existing work. He worked with early mainframe systems and plotters, feeding the computer parameters drawn from his own visual language and using the output to study balance, repetition, and the transformation of form. This research led to the projects El espacio múltiple and La máquina estética, which defined his use of computation as a method for analyzing and extending his visual language. Through these projects, he produced computer-assisted drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures, using the outputs as compositional studies that he selected, adapted, and translated into finished works.  Felguérez stopped using computers in his artistic practice in the late 1970s. His decision was deliberate, noting that while computational systems had supported his research into form and structure, he did not want the machine to direct his work.

In 1954, Felguérez’s first exhibition at the Instituto Francés de América Latina sold out, giving him the momentum to keep building an international career. He went on to exhibit extensively in Mexico and abroad, with shows tied to major biennials and museums. In 1973, he was inducted into Mexico’s Academia de Artes. Two years later, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Grand Prize of Honor at the XIII Biennial of São Paulo. Further recognition followed with Mexico’s National Arts Prize and his appointment as Creator Emeritus. In 1998, the Museo de Arte Abstracto Manuel Felguérez opened in Zacatecas, founded through the artist’s donation of works spanning multiple stages of his career. Felguérez passed away in 2020.