Francisco Zuniga (Costa Rican/Mexican, 1912 to 1998)
Francisco Zuniga was born in Costa Rica, where he began his career as a craftsman in his father’s workshop, which made religious images. It was in Mexico, however, during the great artistic movement, that he began to develop the ideas that would permeate his work for the rest of his life. Zuniga once said, “All art that is valid answers first to its regional characteristics and the more it explores its roots, the more universal is its meaning.” This landscape perfectly expresses that sentiment, incorporating the elements of Mexico’s countryside into Zuniga’s flattened, painterly style.
Zuniga lived in Mexico until his death in 1998; he even became a citizen in 1986. His love of the Latin American landscape is infused into his many paintings and, similarly, his love of the Latin American people is incorporated into his numerous portraits of women, including the beautiful gestural drawing on the back of this canvas. His paintings and sculptures of women defy the ideals of western beauty and instead focus on the female form, the cultural protectors, which he considered as much a part of the national identity as the land itself. Zuniga’s works have been shown around the world, including an individual exhibition in Paris at the Musee de l’Orangerie and the Jardins des Tuileries in 1986.
Information courtesy of Neal Auction Company, October 2008.