Francisco Zúñiga

FRANCISCO ZÚÑIGA (San José, Costa Rica, 1912 - Tlalpan, Mexico, 1998).
"Woman standing", 1960-1962.
Patinated bronze on marble base.
Work reproduced in the artist's catalog raisonné. "Sculpture No. 266".
Work consulted with the Zúñiga Foundation.
Measurements: 43.5 x 15 x 11.5 cm; 3.5 x 13 x 15 cm (base).
As mentioned in the catalog this work, although independent, was part of a set of two sculptures, which originally faced each other. Starting from figuration, the carving of the piece ascends towards an abstraction of pure and emphatic forms that are not detached from reality but that aspires to the immutable. The sinuousness of the forms, the roundings and the hollows are presented as a game in which the light and the shadows exert a great protagonism. The rotundity and the totemic are appreciated in this monumental figure.

A Costa Rican artist who became a Mexican citizen, Francisco Zúñiga worked both in painting and sculpture, and is recognized as one of the best Mexican artists of the 20th century. Son of Manuel María Zúñiga, also a sculptor, in 1935 he won first prize at the Sculpture Salon in Costa Rica, and the following year he moved to Mexico, where he furthered his training at the Escuela de Talla Directa La Esmeralda. There he had as teachers Antonio Ruiz "El Corcito", Oliverio Martinez and Manuel Rodriguez Lozano. In 1938 he was appointed professor at this same school, a position he held until his retirement in 1970. Throughout his career, Zúñiga exhibited his work in Latin America, the United States, Canada and Europe, and in 1958 he was awarded the first prize for sculpture by the National Institute of Fine Arts of Mexico. He has also received prestigious international awards such as the Kotaro Takamura First Prize at the Third Japan Sculpture Biennial (1984). He began his career focused on painting, and throughout his career he continued to work with drawing and chromatic values, especially through pastels and watercolors, although he also produced lithographs. Zúñiga is currently represented at MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico, the Phoenix Museum in Arizona, the Ponce Museum of Art in Puerto Rico and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C.