Lilia Carrillo

LILIA CARRILLO - BIOGRAPHY

Lilia Carrillo was born on November 2, 1930, in Mexico City, the only daughter of Francisco Carrillo, a general pilot, and Socorro García. When she was five years old, she stopped seeing her father forever, staying under the care of her mother Socorro, who lived an intense social life in the intellectual and artistic milieu. Socorro, being a close friend of María Asunsolo, met Diego Rivera, Carlos Pellicer, Carlos Fuentes, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Fito Best Maugard, Cordelia Urueta, Juan Soriano, and many other artists and intellectuals of the moment. Socorro held frequent gatherings in her apartment where all these personalities attended. Although Lilia Carrillo was a very reserved young woman, she had a natural relationship with painters and writers from an early age.

At the age of 17, Lilia decided to study painting. She began studying with Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, who was a friend of her mother's. Later, she studied at La Esmeralda School of Painting and Sculpture from 1947 to 1951. Some of her teachers were Agustín Lazo, Antonio Ruiz, Carlos Orozco Romero, and Federico Cantú. During that time, she suffered a serious accident when she fell backward from a scaffold while painting a mural in the former San Diego convent, which possibly caused her health problems later in life. She finished her studies with a degree in Fine Arts and was mentioned as a distinguished student.

In 1951, Lilia married philosopher Ricardo Guerra, with whom she had her first child. They lived in Guanajuato for two years, dedicating herself to painting. Then in 1953, she moved with her husband to Paris to study at Académie de la Grande Chaumière. They lived in the Casa de México where she painted and did some portraits. This stay marked a definitive departure from Mexican academicism for her, to embrace unexpectedly European avant-garde. She learned about Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and various forms of abstract art. In 1954, Lilia Carrillo met artist Manuel Felguérez who returned to the Casa de Mexico to enjoy a scholarship as a sculptor. Both artists visited exhibitions presented in Paris galleries where they had contact with abstractionism. Lilia presented her first solo exhibition precisely at the Casa de Mexico in 1955. Manuel Felguérez would opt from then on for geometric abstractionism, while Lilia Carrillo would consecrate herself in a few years - after a brief geometricist passage - as a "lyric abstractionist" or "introducer of informalism in Mexico."

Before returning to Mexico, Lilia participated in an exhibition of foreign artists at the Petit Palais. In 1956, she separated from her husband Ricardo Guerra and returned to Mexico pregnant with her second child, to settle in her mother’s house.

Lilia Carrillo and Manuel Felguérez exhibited together for the first time in February 1956 - he as a sculptor and she as a painter - in a collective exhibition at the Carmel-Art Gallery in Mexico City. Part of the work she presented in that exhibition had already been shown at the Casa de Mexico in Paris. Later, both exhibited at the Antonio Souza Gallery in 1957. On that occasion, Lilia Carrillo presented her first completely "abstract" show, but it referred to forms with a "cosmic" and "astral" appearance. It is said that as a child, Lilia Carrillo wanted to be an astronomer. And indeed, her first abstractions do not stop suggesting very concrete references to galaxies, constellations, and nebulae. Lilia Carrillo belonged to the group of artists of Generación de la Ruptura (Breakaway generation) and was the main female exponent of abstractionism in Mexico. Gradually, she gained the recognition of the press, art critics, Mexican authorities, and other great artists of the time such as Rufino Tamayo. She began to be selected to represent Mexico along with other artists. From 1958 to 1959, she participated in the First National Salon of Fine Arts Painting in Mexico City. She participated in several collective exhibitions at the Martin Schwerg Gallery in San Luis Missouri. She participated in the collective New Exponents of Mexican Painting at the University Museum along with the brothers Pedro and Rafael Coronel, Juan Soriano, Francisco Toledo, Fernando García Ponce, Vicente Rojo, and others. She was selected to represent Mexico at the 1st Biennial of Young Artists in Paris.

Lilia Carrillo and Manuel Felguérez exhibited together again at Galería Antonio Souza in 1959, and their work was chosen thanks to the mediation of Fernando de Szyszlo to travel to the Pan American Union in Washington. In 1960, Lilia Carrillo and Manuel Felguérez got married during their stay in Washington. Upon their return to Mexico, the couple established their home and shared a small studio where they painted back to back.

In 1961, Lilia Carrillo participated in the collective exhibition at Galería Antonio Souza, which was presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Lima, Peru. That same year, Lilia Carrillo had a disagreement with Antonio Souza and stopped exhibiting at his gallery, as did Manuel Felguérez. Shortly thereafter, Galería Juan Martin was inaugurated on Hamburgo Street in the Zona Rosa, to create an alternative art market. Both Lilia Carrillo and Manuel Felguérez were immediately drawn to the new gallery and participated in the inaugural group exhibition alongside Leonora Carrington, Enrique Echeverría, Gunther Gerzso, Alice Rahon, and Remedios Varo. They were joined in the following years by Fernando García Ponce, Alberto Gironella, Vicente Rojo, Gabriel Ramírez, and Felipe Orlando. Since then, Lilia Carrillo exhibited regularly at Galería Juan Martin. That same year, Lilia Carrillo was selected to participate in the Mexican group sent to the VI Tokyo Biennial. She also participated in the VI São Paulo Biennial, along with Enrique Echeverría, Manuel Felguérez, Alberto Gironella, Luis Nishizawa, Vicente Rojo, Sjolander, and Vlady. These artists obtained a special room, as an independent group, directly invited by the organization of the Biennial.

In 1962, Lilia traveled to Lima, Peru, to exhibit her work at the Institute of Contemporary Art. In 1963, she exhibited at Galería Juan Martin and was selected to participate in the exhibition Arte Actual de América y España, which was presented in Madrid and Barcelona. In 1964, she participated in the opening exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico. She sent work to the II Annual Pan-American Painting Exhibition in Barranquilla, Colombia, and presented a retrospective exhibition at Galería Casa del Lago of UNAM.

In 1965, Lilia Carrillo was one of the protagonists of the scandal that occurred at the Museum of Modern Art on the occasion of the Salón Esso, in Mexico City. This scandal marked the definitive break with the stagnant tendencies of Mexican painting. In that salon, the jury awarded the first prize to Pintura No. 1 by Fernando García Ponce, and the second to Seradis by Lilia Carrillo, relegating realistic and politically themed works. The jury was composed of Rufino Tamayo, Justino Fernández, Juan García Ponce, Rafael Anzures, and Carlos Orozco Romero. That year, she also participated in the exhibition Actitudes Plásticas held at Galería Aristos of UNAM, a strict selection of contemporary artists from Mexico and the United States, curated by Harold Rosenberg and Juan García Ponce; ten Mexican painters and ten North Americans, including Arshile Gorky, Willem De Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hoffman, and Larry Rivers.

In 1966, Lilia was selected among the most significant artists in Mexico to participate in Confrontation 66, an exhibition held at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. She also participated in the group exhibition Mexico New Generation at museums in San Diego, Portland, and Austin.

Lilia continued to participate in various exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. In 1970, she created a mural measuring five by six meters, which was to be integrated into the Mexican Pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan.

Starting in 1971, Lilia continued to paint with great determination during the difficult recovery from a spinal cord aneurysm that left her partially paralyzed during the last four years of her life. Lilia Carrillo passed away on June 6, 1974.

(Sources: Lilia Carrillo, La constelación secreta, by Jaime Moreno Villarreal, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Ediciones Era, 1993)

LILIA CARRILLO MAIN SOLO AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS