35 Facts About Francisco Goitia

Francisco Bollain y Goitia Garcia was a Mexican artist.

Francisco Goitia was of the Mexican muralism generation but did not share its politics.

Francisco Goitia lived most of the last half of his life simply in then-rural Xochimilco, away from the cultural and intellectual life of Mexico City, dying there in his house.

Francisco Goitia did not leave behind a large collection of work, but a number of his paintings are notable in their own right such as Tata Jesucristo.

Francisco Goitia's work has been recognized with a film biography and a museum in Zacatecas named after him.

Francisco Goitia's mother died giving birth, and he was raised by a wet nurse name Eduarda Velazquez.

Francisco Goitia grew up for a time at the Charco Blanco ranch, and then was sent to Fresnillo to attend primary school.

Francisco Goitia then began to keep track of current events, reading a local newspaper, and studying its illustrations, learning how figures and movement were depicted.

Francisco Goitia initially wanted to go to military school, but his father rejected the idea.

Francisco Goitia was invited to show his work, mostly drawings, at the Salon de Pares in Barcelona, which were well received by critics.

Francisco Goitia exhibited at the International Fine Arts Exhibit successfully and received an award for his work.

Francisco Goitia's only known work from that time is El foro romano.

Francisco Goitia returned to Mexico in 1912, when the country was embroiled in the revolt called the Mexican Revolution.

Francisco Goitia was not a member of the peasant or landowning class, and was somewhat apolitical initially.

Francisco Goitia joined the army of Francisco Villa, offering to paint for the cause.

Villa dismissed the idea, ordering that Francisco Goitia go into battle to see how uniforms became painted in blood.

Francisco Goitia went everywhere with the Villa army, seeing this army defeated along with misery and disease.

Francisco Goitia began to identify with the common people, living among them and wearing the clothes of a mule driver.

When Villa's army was defeated by that supporting Venustiano Carranza at the Battle of Celaya, Francisco Goitia left and went to Mexico City as a civilian.

Francisco Goitia was a complex man, given to fanaticism and generally withdrawn from society.

Francisco Goitia had become very religious, which conflicted with his art.

Francisco Goitia moved into a simple adobe house he built himself, next to the area's chinampa fields and one of its trolley stops.

Francisco Goitia supported himself here teaching in area primary school and from 1929 to 1930 at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas as well.

The then-governor of the state offered him the opportunity to paint murals on government buildings but Francisco Goitia refused as he did not share the political or social ideals of Mexican muralism.

In 1952, Francisco Goitia applied for and received a retirement pension, which allowed him to dedicate himself to certain projects.

Francisco Goitia began to work on a monumental painting called Viva Madero.

Francisco Goitia presented sketches for a monumental sculpture of Fray Martin de Valencia and worked on architectural planning projects for the remodeling of town square, including the Zocalo in Mexico City.

Francisco Goitia died on March 26,1960, at the age of 77 at his home in the San Marcos neighborhood of Xochimilco.

Francisco Goitia's funeral was attended by neighbors and clergy with the complete absence of other artists or intellectuals.

In 2009, a photographic exhibition called The Death of Francisco Goitia was part of the Festival Internacional Cervantino, based on his funeral.

Francisco Goitia's work is generally described as realist, with little ornamentation, with elements of Expressionism or Impressionism.

Francisco Goitia's life began in the Porfirio Diaz years, living to see the Revolution and how it shaped Mexico in the first half of the 20th century.

Francisco Goitia's themes are generally somber, expressing a sense of poetry in the collective conscious and suffering of the Mexican people.

Francisco Goitia's technique is shadowy and archaic in appearance, generally depicting scenes of the Revolution and the poor, people suffering physical and moral misery.

Francisco Goitia did not leave behind many works, in part because he created works sparked by events and many were not meant to last more than weeks or months.