Carlos Orozco Romero
(1898-1983)

Carlos Orozco Romero was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1898. In 1914, Orozco Romero decided to move to Mexico City, where he worked as an illustrator and caricaturist under the pseudonym of Karikato. Orozco Romero contributed to the periodical, El Heraldo de Mexico, Excelsior, El Universal Ilustrado and the Revista.

In 1920 Orozco Romero married Maria Marin. In the same year of his marriage, the governor of Jalisco, Mexico offered Orozco Romero a scholarship to study in Europe. Orozco Romero went to Madrid, Spain where he met the painter Rafael Alberti and the Mexican writers, Luis G. Urbina and Alfonso Reyes.

Orozco Romero and his contemporaries published their prints in a book titled, Los Pequeños. During this same time, Orozco Romero was commissioned to do a mural in the public library of Jalisco, and he painted several murals in the following years.

In 1928 Orozco Romero exhibited in the capital for the first time in the Sonora Gallery. Orozco Romero also exhibited at the New York Art Center, Delphic Studios, Wilmington Society of Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, and the American Federation of Art.

In 1939, the Guggenheim Foundation gave Orozco Romero a grant to study in New York. He had incredible success in his work and became the director of the Museo de Arte Moderno and initiated the Open Studio Movement.

In 1978 and 1980, Orozco Romero had his last expositions at the Modern Museum of Art in Monterrey and later worked as a professor of painting and drawing at various schools in Mexico. He is known as a great muralist, portrait and landscape painter, and his work can be viewed in museums and collections all over the world.

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