FRANCISCO CORZAS
Francisco Corzas Chávez was a Mexican painter and printmaker among the main exponents of the Generación de Rottura. He was born in Mexico City on October 4, 1936, to a very poor family. From 1951 to 1955 he attended the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving La Esmeralda in Mexico City. In 1957 Francisco Corzas went to Italy to study, accompanied by Humberto Kubli, a fellow student from La Esmeralda who shortly after returned to Mexico. Corzas, however, stayed in Rome in the ancient Trastevere district.
During this period he studied fresco technique at the San Giacomo Academy and traveled throughout Europe visiting numerous museums to study classical European art. In 1958 Francisco Corzas met Bianca Dall'Occa Osti whom he married in 1959 in Mexico City.
In the 60s he returned to Mexico where he joined the Generación de Rottura which included artists such as Lilia Carrillo, Vicente Rojo, Fernando Garcia Ponce, Manuel Felguerez, Jose Luis Cuevas, Rafael Coronel and Alberto Gironella.
In 1965 he won first prize at the Salon 65, at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, in Mexico City. Also in Mexico City, in 1972 he presented a major retrospective with artworks created from 1962 to 1972, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes.
In 1973 he returned to Europe again and created two oils for the Vatican. That same year in Milan he created the series Umbrío por la pena at Giorgio Upiglio's print shop. In 1974 he lived in Paris, where he made several lithographs at the Ramsen print shop. In 1976, back in Mexico, he received a scholarship from the Fundacion Cultural Televisa to create the various artworks that make up Agonías y otras ofrendas, which he exhibited at the Modern Art Museum of Mexico City.
One of Francisco Corzas's favorite themes was the female nude, whose archetypes are linked to the fin-de-siècle conception of the femme fatale or the man-eating woman capable of possessing the artist's soul.
Francisco Corzas died in Mexico City on September 15, 1983.
