The Dark Surrealism of Arturo Rivera

Arturo Rivera was born in Mexico City in 1945. He studied painting at Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City (1963-68); and silk-screen process and photo-silk screen process at The City Lit Art School of London (1973-74).

He lived eight years in New York City where he worked as a kitchen helper, construction worker and as a worker in a paint factory to support his painting. In 1979 artist Max Zimmerman saw Rivera’s work at the Latin American Institute in Madison Street and invited him to Munich as an assistant professor at the Kunstakademie. After a year of intensive work and studies he returned to Mexico, invited by the Museo de Arte Moderno where his work was exhibited for the first time.

Since then, he has participated in numerous international group shows: New York City, Puerto Rico, La Habana, Munich, Medellin, Rome, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, London, Poland and the Nordic countries where his work is highly appreciated.

He has showed individually in Chicago, New York City and Mexico, where his work has been exhibited at the Museo de Arte Moderno, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey and Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes. His work is showed His work is showed at the Museo de la Tertulia de Cali, Colombia; Banco Central de Quito; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey; Instituto Cultural Mexicano, Washington D.C.; Die Haus der Kunst, Munich; Casa de las Américas, Cuba; and at the Instituto de la Cultura Puertorriqueña. His work is also kept in private art collections, mainly in Mexico City, Houston, New York, Switzerland and Helsinky.

“ There are realities that would not really exist if it were not because Arturo Rivera has painted them.”

He now lives and works in Mexico City. Owner of an unprecedented visual language which has taken art critics and poets to write “there are realities that would not really exist if it was not because Arturo Rivera has painted them”.