Juan O'Gorman

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Diego Rivera's studio in Colonia San Angel (1930)
Central library of the UNAM
Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transportes

Juan O'Gorman (born July 6, 1905 in Coyoacán , † January 7, 1982 in Mexico City ) was a Mexican architect and painter.

Life

O'Gorman was the first of four children of the Irish painter Cecil Crawford O'Gorman and his wife Encarnación O'Gorman . His younger brother was the historian Edmundo O'Gorman . From 1920 he studied architecture at the Academia de San Carlos , was involved in the political left and became a university professor in the early 1930s. The central library of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the building of the Banco de México in Mexico City are among his architectural works. He also designed the house and studio for Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo , which was built in 1931/1932. In addition to planning a number of other buildings, including 26 primary schools in Mexico City alone, he also worked as a wood painter , wall painter, and art painter and painted numerous important pictures, many of them with socially critical content combined with fantastic elements. In his later years as an architect, O'Gorman consciously turned away from functionalism and oriented himself towards Mexico's pre-Columbian past.

His best-known picture is the mural “Independencia” (1960–1961) in the Castillo de Chapultepec . In 1971 he became a member of the Academia de Artes . In his later years, O'Gorman experienced a variety of family and health problems. He had to sell his private house, which was built between 1953 and 1956 and which was considered to be his main work, in the posh district of Pedregal de San Ángel and experienced that it was demolished in 1969 by the new owners. O'Gorman died by suicide in 1982.

literature

Web links

Commons : Juan O'Gorman  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

swell

  1. ^ Edmundo O'Gorman (English).
  2. ↑ Academia de Artes: Escultura - Juan O'Gorman ( Memento from December 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Life Magazine of January 19, 1959 showed in the article "Houses architects live in" O'Gorman's mosaic-adorned, grotto-like and pre-Columbian inspired house next to the private houses of Kenzō Tange , Eero Saarinen and Oscar Niemeyer - albeit with a derogatory undertone
personal data
SURNAME O'Gorman, Juan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mexican architect and painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Coyoacan
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 1982
Place of death Mexico city