Federico Cantú Garza

Federico Heraclio Cantú Garza (March 3, 1907 – January 29, 1989) was a Mexican painter, engraver and sculptor.

While considered to be a member of the Mexican muralism movement, his style was noticeably different, mostly for adhering to older and more academic forms of painting and sculpture.

He had his most success exhibiting in the United States and Europe, but he did murals and sculptures in Mexico.

His best known work is a sculpture called La maternidad which was adapted as the logo of the Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social (IMSS).

Cantú was born to María Luiza Garza, a novelist, and Adolfo Cantú, a journalist who opposed the Porfirio Díaz regime.

He was born on March 3, 1907, in Monterrey, but later in life, he changed his birth year to 1908 and his birthplace to Cadereyta Jiménez, where his family was originally from.

He was born shortly before the Mexican Revolution and spent his childhood split between Nuevo León and San Antonio, Texas, with the family moving back permanently to Mexico in the 1920s.

In 1922, at age 14, Cantú entered the Escuela de Pintura al Aire Libre, which was directed by Alfredo Ramos Martínez.

He had contact with the growing Mexican muralism movement and briefly studied fresco painting under Diego Rivera in 1924.

From 1924 to 1934, he traveled and lived in Europe and the United States.

He first went to live in Paris on Rue Delambre in Montparnasse, being only sixteen years old.

During his time in Europe he met various artists of the avant garde of the time, including Picasso, Alfonso Reyes, poet César Vallejo and sculptor Mateo Hernández.

He studied with sculptor Jose de Creeft.

When he lived in Paris, he gathered a collection of drawings called the "Paris Collection" by his son Federico Cantú Fabila, FCF.

However, during his time there, he created over two chests of drawings made at Le Grande Chaumière.

These chests were lost.

From 1924 to 1931 he exhibited his work in the United States and Europe, with his first exhibition occurring at the Exposition Park Museum in Los Angeles.

In 1929, he married his first wife, Luz Fabila Montes de Oca.

His times in the United States were short periods.

In the 1930s, he joined a group of painters with the Inés Amor gallery but soon after, established a studio in New York, as friends of his from Montparnasse were there to escape the Second World War.

His first exhibition in Mexico was in 1933 at the Salón de Arte of the Secretaría de Educación Pública.

While living in New York, he took part in several collective shows.

He had much of his success in these two places, with other shows at Tate Gallery in London, the Museum of Modern Art, the Macy's Gallery and the Perls Gallery in New York.

He left Europe for Mexico in 1934.

He did monumental works such as murals and sculptures, with one of the first a mural with Roberto Montenegro in 1934.

These works can be found at universities, government buildings and private homes.

In the 1950s, he created a mural at the headquarters of the Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social in Mexico City called Las Enseñanzas de Quetzalcoatl and another called Maternidad Yacente.

From 1951 to the early 1960s, he devoted most of his time painting murals in private homes, with a number of these since acquired by the government of Nuevo León.

In 1958 he sculpted two stone slabs for the exterior of the Unidad Independencia theater in Mexico City.

However, the day after they were finished, they were robbed.

A similar fate happened to one of the copies of the IMSS emblem.

His remains are at the foot of his mural Dios Padre y crucifixion (1959) at the chapel of the Universidad Intercontinental in Tlalpan.

Cantú's career extended over 65 years and included exhibitions, monumental works, design, illustrations and more.

He created a low relief called El Flechador del sol in 1961 on the Sierra Madre along the highway between Linares and Galeana in the municipality of Iturbide, Nuevo León.

The first was damaged by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, and was repaired by his son, Cantu Fabila and his wife Elsa.

His last monument was designed in 1988, and was dedicated to Alfonso Reyes.

One notable mural is Los informantes de Sahagún at the former monastery of San Diego, which was the site of the Pinacoteca Virreinal in Mexico City.

He also created a mural dedicated to Greek myth at the Philosophy and Letters department of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León.

He died on January 29, 1989.

However, this work crumbled in 2002, with recovered pieces now on display at a site museum.