Luis Nishizawa - Life

Life

Luis Nishizawa (full name Luis Nishizawa Flores) was born on February 9, 1918 at the San Mateo Ixtacalco Haciena in the Cuautitlán municipality of the State of Mexico. His father, Kenji Nishizawa, was Japanese and his mother, María de Jesús Flores, was Mexican. Since he was a child, he has been introverted and solitary, spending his childhood tending cattle for his family. The family moved to Mexico City in 1925, where Nishizawa learned to create jewelry and studied music with a teacher named Rodolfo Halfter.

Although he had interest in art at age 15, he began artistic training at the Academy of San Carlos in 1942, when he was 24, at the height of the Mexican muralism movement . He learned to paint landscapes as well as abstract art and graphics with an interest in the art tradition of Japan. Either as teachers or working for them as assistants, Nishizawa had various mentors such as José María Velasco, Julio Castellanos, José Chávez Morado, Alfredo Zalce and Benjamin Correa . Although nationalism was the prevailing sentiment in artistic production in the 1940s, he studied other movements such as expressionism, abstract art and figurativism as well. He received his masters in fine arts in 1947.

In 1955, he began teaching art at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas at UNAM.

In 1963, he studied engraving with Yukio Fukazawa and took another course in engraving at the Center for Japanese Artists in Tokyo.

He married Eva Zepeda in 1964, with whom he had four children.