Daniel Manrique

Daniel Manrique (November 28, 1939 – August 22, 2010) was a Mexican artist whose life and work mostly revolved around his home neighborhood of Tepito in Mexico City.

He was born into a poor family, who did not support his artistic ambitions, but he maintained his Tepito identity despite.

Manrique is best known for his mural work, which depicts the life and popular culture of poor urban neighborhoods such as Tepito, as well as aspects of Mexican and Latin American history since the Spanish conquest.

Most of this work was done in Tepito as part of the program he founded called Tepito Arte Acá, but he also did murals in other countries such as Canada and Argentina.

His work and the work of Tepito Arte Acá has been recognized by UNESCO, several universities, the Museo de Arte Moderno, CONACULTA, INBA and he was accepted into the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

Daniel Manrique (full name Daniel Manrique Arias) was born on November 28, 1939, in the Tepito neighborhood of Mexico City.

He described his mother, as the “classic Mexican woman,” able to put up with much and loyal to her husband but without ambition.

He described his father as hard-working but a womanizer and drunk.

He said that he had a happy childhood but that he also suffered hunger and poverty.

He began working early, first with an uncle that sold used clothing and another that had a pulque bar.

His talent for drawing appeared at a very young age, but he was not a very good student.

Between working to help the family and being rebellious teenager, he did not finish primary school until he was sixteen.

At that time he dropped out and swore to never work on another’s schedule again.

However, he considered himself ambitious, not for awards but rather to do what he wanted in life.

He stated that he came from class of people who thought of not much more than obtaining their next meal.

He self described as “crazy” and “stubborn” for wanting to do something more.

In 1958, he began studying art at first with the Taller Libre de Arte para Obreros (Free Art Workshop for laborers), which led to studies at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" finishing in 1962.

He suffered hunger and family problems while he was in school as his mother did not support his ambition to study painting, and according to Manrique, did not understand why he wanted to study art and “abandon” his responsibility to help support the family.

His art career is strongly connected to his life in the Tepito neighborhood, which is known as the “fierce neighborhood” (barrio bravo).

Especially in his early career, he continued to support himself with odd cleaning and transport jobs.

Two things that distinguished him from other artists was his propensity to dress in black and his speech style which often included a type of double entendre called an “albur” and other word play.

This dedication began in earnest in the early 1970s.

In 1973, he worked with other artists to create an exhibition called “Conozca México visite Tepito” (Get to know Mexico, visit Tepito), which was held at the José María Velasco Gallery (part of INBA), which not only included art, but also popular music played by live bands.

This led to the foundation of Tepito Arte Acá (Tepito Arte Here) in 1974 by him along with.

The project involved a number of cultural activities, but Manrique was the most dedicated to the project, creating murals, graphic arts and stencil art on tenements, streets and underground passages.

Through his life, he remain well known and mostly respected among the residents of Tepito, although he moved out from there in the late 1980s into another Mexico City neighborhood called Nueva Atzacoalco, where he lived until his death.

He was married to Brisa Avila until his death, which whom he had three children.

His oldest, Daniel Manrique, Jr. is also an artist who lives in Houston.

He chronicled his life in an autobiography called “Tepito Arte Acá” named after the art and social organization he founded.

He promoted the work of the projects in various ways, including at the Architecture Biennial of 1980 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, an artist exchange with the lower-class neighborhood of La Saulaie in Oullins, France in the 1980s and from 1985 to 1986, he had examples of the work on display at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City.

The project received recognition from UNESCO in Warsaw.

His best known artistic work is mural painting.

Most of this work was done in the Tepito neighborhood and other parts of Mexico City.

Other parts of Mexico City include the Organización de Colonos Campamentos Unidos, as well as in Colonia Valle Gómez, Colonia Obrera, Colonia Doctores, at the Escuelita Emiliano Zapata de Santo Domingo and the Pedregales in Coyoacán.

Manrique died on August 24, 2010, while he was still an active artist, soon after painting murals in Argentina and working on plans for another in Mexico.

For a couple of years prior, he had suffered from diabetes, which created complications such as partial paralysis.

The cause of death was an embolism, which was also a diabetes complication.

He was buried at the Jardines del Recuerdo in the State of Mexico.

His work can be found on a variety of spaces from tenements to universities in countries such as Canada, the United States, Spain, France and Argentina along with Mexico.

However he is best known for his work related to his home neighborhood of Tepito.