García Ponce, Fernando

20th Century Mexican

As a young man, García Ponce combined his architecture training at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México with painting lessons imparted by the Spanish exile Enrique Climent (1897-1980). After a journey throughout Europe, where he became acquainted with the artistic avant-gardes, he decided to embrace painting, although his work would always reflect his background in architecture. That is perhaps what led the art critic Jorge Alberto Manrique to define García Ponce as “the painter of passion and order.”

The artist’s cubist beginnings were followed by geometric abstractionism. García Ponce championed the vilification of outmoded nationalism and the conquest of abstraction by the younger painters from the second half of the twentieth century, a movement whose greatest advocate was the art critic Juan García Ponce, Fernando’s brother.

The artist had his first solo exhibition in 1959 at Galería de Arte Mexicano. One year later he was given an Honorary Mention at the Salon of Mexican Fine Art. As an homage to the artist, in 2014 his name was appended to the contemporary art museum of Yucatan, which is now officially known as Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Ateneo de Yucatán MACAY-Fernando García Ponce, and a significant part of his oeuvre is on view in its galleries.