User:Mfalfan/Alfredo Falfan

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Alfredo Falfan
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Birth Name: Alfredo Falfan Vivanco

Born: June 8, 1936, Mexico City

Died: February 24, 2009, Mexico City

Nationality: Mexican

Early Life
Alfredo Falfan, member of a large family (nine brothers and a sister), was born in the humble surroundings of the Merced District, a market area in the old historical center of Mexico City. His father, who was from a rural area in the state of Morelos, eventually became the owner of an antique business.

Career and Life
In 1953, Falfan started his artistic studies at San Carlos (Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas), in Mexico City. Among his teachers were Diego Rivera and Spanish exile Antonio Rodriguez Luna. The latter was impressed with the way Falfan transformed the studio models into figures that reflected the sordid neighborhood in which he lived.

Upon leaving San Carlos in 1960, he began a five-year contract with American dealer and artist, Bryna Prensky. During the twenty-five years she spent in Mexico with her husband, Dr. H. David Prensky, she acquired a large number of works from some of the most important artists in Mexico. That collection, which includes many works by Falfan, is now part of the Mexican Art Collection at the Naples Museum of Art, Naples, Florida. Some of the paintings of Falfan from this group, including one titled Sin Reposo, had been shown in the 1966 Biennale of Cordoba, Argentina, and awarded a special gold medal by the panel of judges which included Alfred Barr, founding director of the New York Museum of Modern Art.

After this early period, Falfan began to experiment with paintings which show the influence Picasso and Matisse. Eventually, his own personal style emerged in works that suggested a microcosmic world in which cells or plants were rendered in subtle colors with overlain transparencies. A painting from this period is En un Rincon de la Alegria (In a Corner of Happiness) (1966), which was acquired by the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City. In the late Sixties, 1968-1969, his paintings became more abstract with textures suggesting the surface of ancient architecture.

In 1969, Falfan decided to go to New York where he was given a given a grant to study graphics at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. During this time, he also worked at Bob Blackburn's Graphic Workshop doing etchings that were basically abstract, using color a variety of experimental techniques. At the end of 1970, he returned to Mexico with his future wife and lifetime partner, New York-born artist, Margaret Hudak.

During 1971, while in Mexico City, Falfan started painting again with a tendency to abstraction. Feeling the necessity of being close to nature, Falfan moved to Zacualpan de Amilpas, Morelos, birthplace of his father. Nestled in the foothills of Mount Popocatepetl, this colonial town, with its sixteenth century convent and lush vegetation, was the source of inspiration for a series of geometric paintings that expressed in a lyrical way the bright colors of nature. For the next eight years, Falfan worked basically in oils on canvas that was often prepared with a mixture of gesso and pumice powder.

In 1978 Rufino Tamayo, who admired Falfan's work, suggested the use of the highly textured graphic technique called "mixografia", which Tamayo had invented with Luis Remba. An example of work from this series is now in the collection of the Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, along with two other paintings from the 70’s purchased by Tamayo.

The following year, in 1979, Fernando Gamboa, who was then Director of Mexico City's Museo de Arte Moderno, invited Falfan to exhibit his work there in his first retrospective, one-person show. The exhibit, which opened in February of 1980, contained works done during a period of 25 years. Raquel Tibol wrote about it in an article titled “De la Contorsion al Paraiso”, in the Mexican magazine Proceso, which underscored the notable change from the dark early period to the more recent luminous one. In the catalogue of this exhibit, Gamboa comments on the fact that Falfan’s painting, “En un Rincon de la Alegria”, while on exhibit in the Museum’s permanent collection, had been admired by Roberto Matta, Robert Motherwell, and Pierre Soulages.

In the years following (1980-1985), Falfan taught at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas, Mexico City. Then in 1985, he went to the U.S., settling in Torrington, Connecticut. A two hour’s drive from New York City, this area’s New England landscape inspired a series of paintings which were rendered in a cooler range of colors. Some of these paintings of shadowy interiors displayed a kind of melancholy introspection and mystery. Later, these images became more abstract and suggestive. During this period he exhibited his work in a one-person show at the Mexican Consulate, New York City (February, 1988).

Upon his return to Mexico City in 1989, Falfan exhibited at the Galeria Metropolitana of the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana a retrospective entitled, Mis Ultimos Diez Años de Trabajo (My Last Ten Years of Work). During the following years, Falfan worked in a semi-realistic way, painting a series of landscapes with figures that oscillated between the nostalgic and dramatic. These works were included in another retrospective show entitled, Lo Imaginal, (1994) in the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.

The last important individual show of Falfan, titled Una Larga Jornada Hacia la Noche (A Long Day’s Journey into the Night, was at the Galeria HB, Mexico City (1999). The dark and brooding works reflected the pain of several personal losses. In this same year, he was given the grant from the Mexican government’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores Artisticos, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes  which lasted six years. Several works of this period were shown in various itinerant exhibits that traveled throughout Mexico’s principal cities.

His death
In 2001, Falfan was diagnosed with cancer of the prostate, which was treated with a highly potent and devastating type of radiation. His health deteriorated over the next years, but in spite of this, he continued to work. In 2007, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation awarded him a grant which inspired him to produce a body of paintings that express his deep sentiments and concern for the state of mankind in a deteriorating world.

After serious complications in his physical state, Falfan was treated in various hospitals in Mexico City and finally died on the 24th of February, 2009. His remains are buried in his beloved Zacualpan de Amilpas, Morelos.