Alfonso Michel

(b Colima, 1906; d Mexico City, 1957). Mexican painter. After living for more or less extensive periods in San Francisco, Florence and Paris, he returned in 1930 to Mexico, where he painted at the University of Guadalajara with Jes?s Guerrero Galv?n. Subsequently he settled permanently in Mexico City. Of the Mexican artists working in the 1930s and 1940s he is perhaps the one who most distanced himself from the rigidity imposed by the notion of a Mexican school, his sojourns abroad having undoubtedly introduced him to ideas from the European avant-garde. He was particularly influenced by the Synthetic Cubism of Braque and Picasso in his handling of figures, as in Horse and Still-life with Landscape (both Colima, Mus. Cult. Occident.), which he enriched with a very personal and sensual use of colour.

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