Alejandro Colunga - prints and biography

Biography

Alejandro Colunga (b. 1948, Guadalajara, Jalisco) is one of Mexico’s most distinctive contemporary artists, celebrated for his fantastical imagery that merges surrealism with the deep currents of Mexican folk tradition. Associated with the Nueva Mexicanidad movement, Colunga has built a career defined by his ability to transform familiar motifs into dreamlike, often whimsical visions that exist somewhere between the magical and the absurd.

Largely self-taught, Colunga first pursued music before committing fully to painting and sculpture in the late 1960s. His work quickly garnered attention for its inventive spirit and playful theatricality. Drawing inspiration from legends, rituals, carnival celebrations, and everyday Mexican life, his art is filled with hybrid beings, trickster figures, and objects that seem alive. These fantastical inventions embody the humor, irreverence, and mystery that define his oeuvre.

Colunga’s creative versatility spans painting, printmaking, ceramics, and sculpture. His bronze and mixed-media installations—often interactive, surreal benches, chairs, and figures—can be found in public spaces across Mexico, including Guadalajara and Mexico City, where they invite viewers to engage directly with his imaginative universe. His works blur the boundaries between functional object and sculpture, art and folklore, fantasy and reality.

In his prints and paintings, Colunga often stages scenes of revelry and transformation: masked figures, musicians, dancers, and celebrants populate environments filled with streamers, balloons, or candles, suggesting both festivity and dreamscape. These compositions evoke joy but also touch on deeper themes of identity, mortality, and cultural memory.

Colunga’s career includes exhibitions throughout Mexico, the United States, and Europe, and his works are represented in major public and private collections. He has become recognized not only as a central figure in modern Mexican art but also as a cultural ambassador whose work bridges the popular and the avant-garde.