Humberto Carrasco, Mexican (1929 - )

Born in 1929 in Mexico, Humberto Carrasco's work transports us to places brimming with memories, imagination, and profound emotions. His paintings awaken nostalgia and longing for those cities, places, and hidden corners we once knew and cherished; they are recollections that linger in our minds. He is a creator of images that possess the power to evoke feelings in those who contemplate them. His canvases reveal the skill of a painter who has acquired mastery and is able to flawlessly translate images onto the canvas, imbuing his work with a magic that the observer cannot help but perceive. His work is a historical archive, a pictorial chronicle of Mexico City, as one critic pointed out.

All of the above, along with his dedication to painting urban landscapes, primarily those of Mexico City, Real de Catorce, Oaxaca, and the beautiful architecture of Zacatecas—finding in the latter its distinctive architectural beauty—allowed him to develop a unique and unmistakable style that makes his work instantly recognizable. His work also inspired two poets to write the poems “Me detente a mirar” by Josefina Cristo and “A un Cuadro” by the Catalan poet and Jesuit Juan Bautista Bertrán.

His work has an added value beyond its evident artistic quality, as it becomes a historical archive of the urban landscape, because most of these spaces have been devoured by the architectural transformation of the environment, and it is also a gift, an inheritance that he leaves to us all, a historical legacy that rescues what man, in his predatory blindness, destroys of himself.

He concluded his career by donating his artwork to the Zacatecas Institute of Culture “Ramón López Velarde,” where it is housed at the Zacatecas Museum, which provided a space to accommodate it. The 26 donated works, some of them from his early days as a painter, are exhibited in a room named “Humberto Carrasco: Time and Memory.”

Her last exhibition was in 2006 at the Irma Valerio Galerías in Zacatecas who became his main promoter in the city.

During his 46-year professional career, Humberto Carrasco only presented twelve exhibitions and in 2015 he left unfinished his last painting which is the house of Santa Julia where he was born and raised.