Nicolás Moreno

Nicolás Moreno (Mexico City, 1923-2012) was one of the most notable landscape painters of twentieth-century Mexico and an heir to the tradition of José María Velasco and Dr. Atl. His work focuses almost entirely on the country's landscapes, with a documentary aim that includes the deterioration of the environment.

He trained at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, the former Academia de San Carlos, from 1941 to 1945, where his first teacher discouraged him, regarding landscape as a minor genre. In the years that followed he travelled across Mexico painting from nature. After a teaching career in rural teacher-training schools and secondary schools, he received an INBA grant in 1953 to paint for a year.

He worked in oils, as well as in etching, aquatint and drypoint. His paintings depict the Sierra Tarahumara, the Valle del Mezquital and the remains of Lake Xochimilco. His murals at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, which include scenes of Teotihuacán and the Valle del Mezquital, are among his best-known works. He was a founding member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana and took part in more than a hundred solo and group exhibitions in several countries.

Moreno preferred a realistic depiction of natural phenomena to linking landscape with the prehispanic past, which made him an innovator. In 2010 the INBA gave him a diploma recognising him as heir to Velasco and Dr. Atl. He died in 2012, and that same year the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana held a posthumous exhibition in his honour.