“I don’t belong to one period,
I create my own time and
fight every day to expand it”
“I don’t belong to one period,
I create my own time and
fight every day to expand it”
In brief, Carrasco Bretón represents a rare case in painting considering his formation imbued in arts, sciences and humanities, which has made him a singular creator whose works respond to intimate existence values not only for his varied themes, but essentially in the way he has slowly created throughout more than 42 years of artistic work, with a blend of patience and obsession, one style of his own, far apart from the traditional canons of isms, schools and fashions. Mainly his easel works evidence intimism in the composition, his palette selection and that profound study of geometry, the use of textures, among various categories of creation.
Carrasco Bretón is born in 1950 in Mexico City. He studies Chemical Engineering in the National Autonomous University of Mexico, obtaining an honorary mention in 1975.
From 1970 to 1973 he studied with Don Lino Picaseño y Cuevas, a legendary Master Painter and Architect in the San Carlos Painting School. Carrasco was a pioneer in teaching at the UNAM College of Sciences and Humanities from 1972 to 1978.
In 1977, he starts the preliminary courses for a Master in Philosophy of Science, which were not completed.
In 1973, he exhibited collectively in the Galería Yoca, and has exhibited in Mexico and abroad (Panama, Costa Rica, San Diego, participating so far in 199 collective exhibitions in San Francisco, New Orleans, Miami, New York, Florence, Spain, etc.).
In 1977 he presented his first individual exhibition and has displayed 62 personal showings in Mexico, USA, France, Spain, Hungary…
In 1976, he designs the sets for the world premiere of Fernando Arrabal’s Gran Ceremonial (Great Ceremonial) in Mexico (Teatro El Granero).
In 1980, he and other plastic artists refound the Mexican Society of Plastic Artists (SOMART); in 1989, he participates in founding the COMAV (Visual Artists World Council).
In 1993 he is distinguished as a founding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences and from 1996 to 2002, he is Advisor of the UNAM’s Roberto Medellín Foundation.
In 2000, he is elected to the National Directive Council of the Mexican Society of Plastic Arts Authors. His artistic endeavor comprises two fields: the easel works and the mural paintings; so far, he has completed 70 murals in Universities, City Halls, Houses of Culture, Private Companies, etc. Foremost among the most well-known are the two Murals in the Legislative Palace of San Lazaro, Chamber of Deputies, in Mexico City, the Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Town Hall mural, and abroad, the Sofia, Bulgaria mural in the National Academy of Art and the mural at the World Intellectual Property Organization headquarters in Geneva. His leaning towards mural painting has driven him to deliver lectures about it in Mexico, France, Spain, Costa Rica, Canada, USA and Bulgaria. Carrasco Bretón patented the ISOPLASTIC technique for painting murals able to be transported to any part of the world, like the one he displayed in the first exposition of the itinerant mural, in the Universal Exposition of Seville, Spain in 1992, during six months.
His mural work has the distinctive feature of being painted in a studio and then hang “IN SITU” within 8 hours. On the other hand, it should be noted that hid artistic trajectory matches his personal philosophy about the independence of creation, until now he has not been scholarship holder of any public or private institution, his original or graphic works are in most of the American countries and some countries in Europe, like Switzerland, France, Spain, Germany, Italy among others.
Carrasco Bretón is an artist who merges his perspective, ideology and aesthetics in the easel and mural works, throughout the dialectical contradiction of being, with an effort to link up the triangle of science, philosophy and art. So, the subject matter of his murals comprises the great concerns—the philosophical theme, the environmental problematic, the world of mythology, visual arts, social movements, the scientific and technological context, the local history of human settlements, etc.
In his easel works, he transmutes his erotic, literary concerns, emotional states, filial, fatherly, motherly, love relationships, his vision of politics, dance, film, theater, poetry, etc. He also expresses the eternal feminine, a constant figure in the series of Carrasco; he is a staunch believer in a humanistic art where woman and man must foreshadow the value of existence and the legitimate ways of expression among genders. Similarly, he is convinced that painting possesses that syncretic way of harmonising abstract and concrete, without prejudice to any of the two extremes of the expression forms that aroused such great confusion in the critical and artistic circles during the last quarter of the 20th century.
In brief, Carrasco Bretón represents a rare case in painting considering his formation imbued in arts, sciences and humanities, which has made him a solitary and genuine creator whose works respond to intimate existence values not only for his varied themes, but essentially in the way he has slowly created throughout more than 42 years of artistic work, with a blend of patience and obsession, one style of his own, far apart from the traditional canons of isms, schools and fashions. Mainly his easel works evidence intimism in the composition, his palette selection and that profound study of geometry, the use of textures, among various categories of creation.
62 Individual Exhibitions
198 Collective Exhibitions
70 Murals
7 Traveling Mural Exhibitions
1 Stage Designs
He has given more than 70 lectures in various countries—Mexico, United States, Canada, England, Germany, Spain, France, Hungary, Panama, Costa Rica and Cuba, among other, about art and culture.