Mexico, 1927-2019

 

Born on November 3, 1927 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Carlos Jurado was photography icon worldwide. His work covers several disciplines such as painting, cinema, drawing, muralism, engraving and photography. In 1944 he began his painting studies in La Esmeralda with teachers like María Izquierdo. From 1954-1959 he was a member of the Popular Graphics Workshop. His professional life as an artist begins in 1957, with a painting exhibition at the Ateneo de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas. He founded the Faculty of Plastic Arts (1974-1977) of the Universidad Veracruzana where he established a degree in photography, the first in Mexico.

 

It was in 1972 when Carlos Jurado begins with his own way of making photography. He started making pictures using merely pinhole cameras of his own creation. A year later, he exhibits at the French Institute of Latin America (IFAL) called “Anti-photography with cardboard cameras without a lens”. In 1974, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) published the first edition of his book "The art of apprehension of images and the unicorn". Through an extraordinary way of fabulating, the artist tells the story of how a thin unicorn horn is used to make a hole in a camera obscura, which will begin the multiplication of images.

 

The University Museum of El Chopo organized an important retrospective of Carlos Jurado in 1986, called "What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?". After this he continued working independently in his workshop in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City. In 2016, the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City showed “Molecules of the world. Carlos Jurado ”, a show consisting of 200 artworks, including unpublished pieces.

 

Carlos Jurado died on November 30, 2019 in Mexico City.