Vicente Rojo

Biografía

Spanish-born painter, sculptor, and graphic designer Vicente Rojo was part of the Generación de la Ruptura, a group of postwar Mexican artists who challenged the supremacy of Mexican Muralism, instead championing abstraction and artistic experimentation. Rojo enrolled at the prestigious La Esmeralda school where Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were instructors, but opted instead to study under Miguel Prieto. In both the artist’s painting practice and graphic design work, he demonstrated an interest in simplified forms and a limited color palette as shown in his gouache painting, Untitled (1968). In 1960, Rojo co-founded the publishing firm Ediciones Era, which focused primarily on innovative works of poetry, fiction, and criticism by emerging authors. He designed numerous book covers for the firm, and attracted widespread attention with his blocky book cover design for the first edition of Gabriel García Márquez’s seminal magical realist novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).