Melchor Peredo

Melchor Peredo
Melchor Peredo in the Palacio de Gobierno, Xalapa, Veracruz
Born
Óscar Melchor Peredo y García

(1927-01-06)6 January 1927
Mexico City, Mexico
Died8 April 2026(2026-04-08) (aged 99)
Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
EducationNational School of Arts
Known forPainting, Muralist
MovementMexican Mural Movement, Social Realism

Óscar Melchor Peredo y García (6 January 1927 – 8 April 2026) was a Mexican muralist and a representative of the social realist school of mural painting in Mexico. His murals depict scenes from Mexican history with an emphasis on revolutionary subjects. His work is featured in public and government buildings across Mexico. He also painted murals in the USA and Europe.

Life and career

Melchor was born in Mexico City on 6 January 1927. His father Luis G. Peredo was a journalist during the 1910 Mexican Revolution and became a pioneer of Mexican cinema. In 1918 Luis directed the silent film Santa based on the 1903 naturalist novel by Federico Gamboa. At the age of eleven, inspired by the work of muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, Melchor decided to become a painter. He studied at several major art institutes in Mexico City including the Escuela La Esmeralda and the National School of Arts. He painted his first mural in 1947 in a maternity clinic, depicting the exploitation of marginalized workers in Mexico City.

In 1953, he joined the Frente Nacional de Artes Plásticas and was commissioned as a representative to assist at the IV World Youth Festival for Peace in Romania. The art critic Judith Krauss made arrangements for him to stay in Bucharest but he decided that the most important movement was in Mexico and returned home to join a research workshop funded by the National Polytechnic Institute. There he perfected his fresco technique under the guidance of José Gutierrez, a proponent of the first artistic use of acrylic paint.

Melchor Peredo died in Xalapa, Veracruz, on 8 April 2026, at the age of 99.

List of murals

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ In this Mexican name, the surname is Peredo and the second or maternal family name is García.

References

  1. ↑ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0673027/
  2. ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0009575/
  3. ↑ "Melchor Peredo Bio at the Cultural Institute of Veracruz". Archived from the original on 23 July 2011.
  4. ↑ Gutiérrez, José (1956). From Fresco to Plastics: New Materials for Mural and Easel Paintings. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada.
  5. ↑ Gómez, Eirinet (8 April 2026). "Murió el muralista Melchor Peredo García; pintó obras en México, Francia y EU". La Jornada.

Bibliography