Mario Rangel
Born in 1938, Mario Rangel is a consummated artist of the Mexican plastic tradition of the 20th century. He studied at the prestigious art schools of La Esmeralda and San Carlos, where he also taught for over two decades. His teachers include renowned artists such as Luis Nishizawa, Fernando Castro Pacheco, Feliciano Peña, Nicolas Moreno, Santos Balmori and Pablo O´Higgins. During his time as a student, he executed a mural alfresco in the Cervantes Library in Mexico City and collaborated on the collective "Meso-América" mural located at the Museum of Anthropology. Mario studied art at the time when mural art was at its peak in Mexico, and painting was linked to a social and political commitments. However, for Mario, art was linked to the realm of the imagination, and he preferred to take the path that surrealist painters Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo were leading in Mexico at the time.
Throughout his career, which spans for over seven decades, Mario has developed a very personal world of unexpected and poetic juxtapositions in all sorts of media: tempera, oil, print, watercolor, acrylic. For over four decades, Mario’s work was shown at several important art galleries in Mexico and the United States, including the Gallery of Mexican Art/Florencia (Mexico City), the Cranfill Gallery (Dallas, TX), and the Estela Shapiro Gallery (Mexico City). Today, his work is part of the permanent collection at Blanton Museum, University of Texas, Austin.
After Estela Shapiro Gallery closed in 2003, Mario Rangel has remained a cult figure, selling his work directly to the private collectors who are fortunate to remain in contact with him. To this extent, Campos Polanco is proud to be one of those collectors. Those who set foot at our residences will have the honor to witness the magic of Mario Rangel’s personal world, and the delicacy and master of his art.
