Remanso al sol (Haven in the Sun)

Like many of his contemporaries, Coronel’s early formation took place between Mexico and Paris. His studies in La Esmeralda National School of Painting and Sculpture, under the direction of artists like Rivera, Zúñiga, and Orozco, and later work in the Parisian sculpture studios of Constantin Brancusi and Victor Brauner, exposed him dually to the styles and work of Mexican Muralist masters and Europe’s most important modernist sculptors. By the 1950s, he developed his own style and secured his place in the Ruptura. His artworks unite Mexico’s past and present through a symbolic dialogue that melds pre-hispanic geometric forms and color with modern abstraction. His early career as a sculptor influenced his two-dimensional work as he explored the relationship of volumetric forms in the flat-plane. Color became essential to the construction of his compositions. The vibrancy of the red in Remanso al sol, activates the work’s negative space, leaving the lithograph with a sense of vibrancy and energy that negates its blank space.