Ricardo Mazal

White acrylic on fuchsia natural silk from Oaxaca, hand-dyed with cochineal

2023

Ricardo Mazal, one of Mexico’s most prominent contemporary artists, is known for his lush abstract oil paintings in which he explores spiritual themes. He is perhaps best known for his near decade-long investigations into the sacred burial rituals of diverse cultures, from the Mayan tomb of The Red Queen in Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, to the Buddhist prayer flags of Bhutan. These studies yielded a succession of large, multidisciplinary bodies of work reflective of the artist’s observations. However, his recent most series, Violeta, Silence in Prague and Full Circle, are imbued with a more personal narrative, increasingly transitioning Mazal from witness to author. Ricardo Mazal has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe. Since 2000, he has had fourteen individual museum exhibitions in Mexico and the United States, including five retrospectives of his work at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey (2000), the Museo de Arte Moderno de la Ciudad de México (2006), the Museo de Arte de Querétaro (2009), the Museo de Arte Abstracto Manuel Felguerez (2010) and the Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe, as well as thematic exhibitions in the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (2006) and the Museo Nacional de Antropología (2004-2005) among others. In 2015 Mazal’s work was included in Frontiers Reimagined at the 56th Venice Biennale. In 2020, the solo exhibition Praga was on view at the Centro Cultural Estación Indianilla in Mexico City. The show comprised new work from his Prague series, which debuted at Sundaram Tagore Chelsea in 2019. Mazal’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; Museo de Arte Abstracto Manuel Felguérez, Zacatecas, Mexico; Maeght Foundation, Paris; Centro de las Artes, Monterrey, Mexico; Cirque du Soleil, Montreal; the Peninsula Hotel, Shanghai; and Deutsche Bank, New York and Germany. Born in Mexico City, 1950 | Lives and works in Mexico City and New York