In 2026, the centenary of Arturo García Bustos’ birth and the ninth anniversary of his death, which occurred on April 7, 2017, will be commemorated.
For this reason, the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (Inbal) will pay tribute to him in August in the Manuel M. Ponce room of the Palace of Fine Arts, reported his daughter, architect Rina García Lazo. So far there is no retrospective exhibition scheduled, although the family is open to suggestions.
The painter, muralist and engraver was born on August 8, 1926 near the capital’s Zócalo, by the Plaza del Volador, although he used to say that he was from Oaxaca, due to the great love he felt for that state. He even made the mural Oaxaca in history and myth (1979-1980) on the monumental staircase of the Government Palace, and years later he painted The world of duality, the Zapotec and Mixtec cosmogony (1986-1987) on the left side staircase of the same building.
García Bustos was the youngest member of the group of Los Fridos, students from the La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving who studied with Frida Kahlo at her home in Coyoacán. His relationship with the artist extended to Diego Rivera, to whom he was an assistant. In those circles he met Rina Lazo, an artist of Guatemalan origin and also Rivera’s assistant, whom he married in 1949.
Before entering La Esmeralda, in 1943, he studied high school at the National Preparatory School number 1 and attended the National School of Plastic Arts as a student. In La Esmeralda he also had Feliciano Peña, Agustín Lazo and María Izquierdo as teachers.
García Bustos belonged to a third generation of artists related to the Mexican School. In his entrance speech in 1977 as a full academician to the graphics section of the Academy of Arts, he recorded his admiration for José Clemente Orozco, “who allowed me to climb his scaffolding while he worked”; to Kahlo, “contemplate her in her studio painting her painting The broken column and “see Rivera draw the wall with his master’s confidence, without removing the charcoal from his hand, figure after figure as if they were already outlined and he only caressed them.”
In the same document, García Bustos spoke of his entry into the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP): “In 1947 I joined this group of artists. I came because of my admiration for the work they did and especially for the teacher Leopoldo Méndez, who was the spirit of this group.” The TGP had the collaboration, among other figures, of the architect Hannes Mayer, the last director of the Bauhaus of Dessau, who told them: “Each one must know how to grain his stone. It is necessary that each artist master the basic tasks of making his editions in the printing press, typographic training, selecting the appropriate paper, supervising the execution.”
It was in that “workshop-school” that he trained as an engraver: “social meaning graphics and the experience of collective work were, in my opinion, our contribution.” Throughout his career he was committed to the humanist struggles and libertarian ideas of the Latin American people. In 1945, García Bustos had formed with the other three Fridos – Arturo Estrada, Guillermo Monroy and Fanny Rabel – the Group of Young Revolutionary Artists. According to the artist, in half a century “we have seen the birth and death of countless ‘isms’, of which very few will persist, that resist the judgment of history.”
As for muralism, the first project in which he participated, with the other three Fridos, was the collective mural on the façade of the La Rosita pulquería, in Coyoacán, in 1943. The execution of We love peace and the world upside down for beauty, Made in oil on flattening, it was part of the study program of Kahlo’s four disciples. It was inaugurated on the morning of June 19 with a popular festival.
Two years later he was part of the team that, under the direction of Kahlo, painted the mural in tempera. single mothers, in the Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez Women’s House, Public Laundries, also in Coyoacán. Other projects included the fresco primitive lovers (1947) at the Posada del Sol hotel, in the Doctores neighborhood; Zapata, made of vinylite on cement, at the Temixco Primary School, Morelos (1948); a series of seven murals with agrarian themes in the Sociedad Cooperativa Ejidal, in Atencingo, Puebla, with Rina Lazo and Atilio Carrasco (1952).
Also, the fresh Residents of the seven regions of Oaxaca in the Oaxaca Ethnography Room, of the National Museum of Anthropology (1964); a series of 16 wall engravings to decorate the Venustiano Carranza House Museum in Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila (1969); nine mural panels for the Casa del Obrero Mundial in Mexico City (1971); The university on the threshold of the 21st century (1988-1989), at the Universidad station, of the Metro, and the fresco The Tepanec heritage on the threshold of the third millennium, in the House of Culture of Azcapotzalco, among other murals.
For many years he taught engraving, painting and drawing in schools in Mexico and Guatemala. He founded the Engraving Workshop at the Casa del Lago in Chapultepec. In 1977 it was the subject of the retrospective exhibition Compromised graphics in the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts and The image of post-revolutionary Mexico, at the National Museum of Prints. The following year, this venue organized the retrospective Creative passion, militant art.