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FRANCISCO ZUĂ‘IGA
Francisco Zúñiga
José Jesús Francisco Zúñiga Chavarría (December 26, 1912 – August 9, 1998) was a Costa Rican and Mexican artist, known both for his painting and his sculpture. Zúñiga was born in Costa Rica in 1912; his father, Manuel Maria Zúñiga, was also a sculptor. He won first prize in a 1935 Latin American sculpture competition, the Salón de Escultura en Costa Rica, for his bronze sculpture La maternidad, and in 1936 moved to Mexico, where he studied art formally at La Escuela de Talla Directa, working with Guillermo Ruiz, sculptor Oliverio Martinez, and painter Manuel Rodríguez Lozano. In 1938, he took a faculty position at La Esmeralda; he remained at that position until retiring in 1970. In 1958 he was awarded the first prize in sculpture from the Mexican National Institute of Fine Arts
Journalist Fernando González Gortázar lists Zúñiga as one of the 100 most notable Mexicans of the 20th century, while the Encyclopædia Britannica calls him "perhaps the best sculptor" of the Mexican political modern style.
Zúñiga's works have been shown widely, including displays in Los Angeles, San Salvador, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Stockholm, and Toronto. Museums holding his works in their permanent collections include the San Diego Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Ponce Museum of Art in Puerto Rico, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C
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