Hermenegildo bustos biography

Born in Purisima del Rincon, a small town near Leon, Guanajuato. During his life he worked many odd jobs such as picking fruit, carpentry, painting and sculpture, but it was his unparalleled ability to make retablos and exvotos which would make him one of the best Mexican artists of the turn of the Century. Little is known about his formal education, although his great skill makes evident that he did receive at least some academic training. It is thought that he may have been a disciple of Juan N. Herrera and/or Jose J. Montiel. As an artist, he started working in portraiture and became quite skilled and sought after for it. He worked with modest materials, primarily using tin sheets as support for his masterpieces since his commissioners were also of modest means. Early work usually consisted of just the upper body, while in later years he started making full figure painting, and incorporated more than just one figure to his art. Even if it's true that he can be criticized about his use of anatomic perspective, it's his handling of facial features and expressions that give his work such an amazing character. Aside from portraits, he also made still lifes and religious painting. He decorated the church of the Purisima in his home town with images from the Passion of Christ. He died in the same little town where he was born, the same place he lived and where he had worked all of his life in

Hermenegildo Bustos () is the most important Mexican painter of the 19th Century. If you’ve never heard of him--well, don’t be surprised. A year ago, few in the United States had.

Bustos’ reputation has been rather like the proverbial stone dropped into a pond. At its center, the splash was dramatic, while its ripples have been slowly expanding in larger and larger circles. Finally they’ve reached our shores.

The center of the pond is the provincial village of La Purisima del Rincon in central Mexico. There, Bustos was born, lived almost all his life and died at the age of

For the past year, five of his paintings have toured the United States as part of the sprawling “Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries,” now concluding its much-remarked journey at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (through Dec. 29). If you haven’t seen the Bustos pictures yet, proceed directly to the ground floor galleries of the Hammer Wing.

Bustos painted countless ex voto images, for neighbors desperate to express gratitude for divine intervention in their earthly tragedies, as well as occasional religious pictures. Most significantly, he made often mesmerizing portraits of local bourgeoisie and peasants. So important to the establishment of civic pride was this work that, eventually, the town would come to be called La Purisima del Bustos.

Soon after his death, however, Bustos was forgotten. The bloody, protracted Revolution of intervened. Not until the s did interest revive, in the person of poet and diplomat Francisco Orozco Munoz, who began to collect the painter’s work. A retrospective was mounted in , and the circle now encompassed the state of Guanajuato, whose eponymous capital has since become the principal repository of Bustos’ art.

Today, an extraordinary permanent display at the Alhondiga de Granaditas, an i

Mexican painter

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Bustos and the second or maternal family name is Hernández.

José Hermenegildo de la Luz Bustos Hernández (13 April , Purísima del Rincón – 28 June , Purísima del Rincón) was a Mexican painter; known mostly for portraits, although he also created religious paintings and still-lifes.

Biography

He was born to a fervent Catholic family, descended from Indians who had been attached to the mission. Despite growing up in a small village, his youth was subject to the turmoils of the time, including a cholera epidemic, "La Desamortización" and the establishment of the Mexican nation.

Following in his father's footsteps, he served as a sort of registrar for the village; recording names, dates and events. At various times, he worked as a tinsmith, tailor, carpenter, musician and mason; also displaying an affinity for history and astronomy. He also maintained an orchard for most of his life.

His only formal artistic studies were six months spent with Juan Nepomuceno Herrera (–), a portrait painter from nearby León, who apparently taught him little and treated him like a servant. His first known painting dates from , when he was eighteen; a portrait of Vicente Arriaga, a local priest. In , he painted a posthumous portrait of his father, who had died the year before.

Over the next few years, he created complete sets of portraits of all the notable families in the area. He was married in For two weeks in , Purísima played host to President-elect Benito Juárez, who decided to establish an office there, and Bustos was chosen to paint his portrait (now lost).

His own self-portrait was not painted until He designed and made his own coat for the occasion, which displays the words, Hermenegildo Bustos, indio de este pueblo de Purísima del Rincón, nací el 13 de abril de . His paintings were often inscribe

Hermenegildo Bustos (b. ; d. ), Mexican painter. Bustos lived his entire life in the town of Purísima del Rincón, Guanajuato. The diverse types of jobs he held—ice vendor, sacristan, carpenter, maguey planter, and musician—allowed him to bring to his canvases a variety of themes, which were combined with the freshness of a smalltown painter who worked by assignment.

The great majority of his work consists of exvotos, a form of religious expression popularized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These small works, painted in lamina, depict tragic scenes from which the subjects felt they had been saved by the miraculous intercession of a saint, to whom the ex-voto was dedicated. The ex-votos of Bustos are distinguished by the individuality he gave to his subjects. His talent as a portraitist enabled him to capture with a rural flavor the features of his subjects—whom we know by name, thanks to an inscription on the ex-voto.

Bustos did more than paint models; he instilled his subjects with a character that went beyond physical features. Two of his dining-room paintings are outstanding for their iconography and extraordinary pictorial quality, recalling the botanical illustrations of the eighteenth century. The paintings must have been highly prized by Bustos, since they remained in his home until his death.

See alsoArt: The Nineteenth Century; Retablos and ExVotos.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pascual Aceves Barajas, Hermenegildo Bustos; su vida y su obra ().

Raquel Tibol, Hermenegildo Bustos; Pintor del Pueblo, 2d ed. ().

Additional Bibliography

Ortiz Angulo, Ana. La pintura mexicana independiente de la Academia en el siglo XIX. Mexico, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia,

                                      Esther Acevedo