Arceo's constant, innovative search for a pictorial method to break away from illusion is what gives his work such impact.
Arceo maintains a simple subject matter in order to create an intricate visual movement with complex spatial interactions between the figure and space."
His works are derived from conscious and sometimes subconscious experiences and are, to a great extent, the result of the spontaneous marks, colors and patterns that evolve into a final work.
Mexican printmaking with social themes is an artistic current sui generis. It differs from other artistic expresions which are confined to limited circles. Since the beginning of the 20th Century it has become part of public life like a decisive epigram, a sharp social commentary and a syntesis of the ancestral Mexican iconographic force. A printmaker and painter, educator and curator, community activist and cultural ambassador, Rene Arceo was born in Cojumatlan, Michoacan, Mexico in 1959. He completed high school after relocating to the United States in 1979 and soon thereafter attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1985 he earned a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in printmaking as well as a teaching certificate. From 1986 to 1999, Rene worked for the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago, helping it become the largest Mexican Fine Arts institution in the nation. Now, he’s the Visual Arts Coordinator for the Office of Language and Cultural Education at the Chicago Public Schools. He has continued to exhibit across the city, state, and nation as well as in Mexico and Canada.
Rene Arceo has curated dozens of exhibitions for galleries, universities, and museums and has helped found exhibition spaces such as Galeria Ink Works. In 1990 he was the co-founder of Chicago's Mexican Printmaking Workshop. Among many of its projects was the printing of a 200 foot long woodblock print with a steamroller on a street in downtown Chicago. The print’s theme, the history of migration to Chicago, connected to the important role printmaking has had in Mexico’s cultural and political history; an aesthetic tradition that bridges the fine and popular arts.
Rene Arceo’s work has been influenced by an awareness of the populist traditions of Mexican printmaking and by his regard for the work of Mexican artists such as Alfredo Zalce and Leopoldo Mendez. It recalls important artistic movements of the 1930’s and 1940’s and the uniqueness of the modernist movement in Mexico and its dialogue with European traditions. While references to the Mexican muralist movement are typical, specially Siqueiros and Orozco, Rene’s rejection of political dogma in his work recalls the countermovement, “La Contracorriente”, of Rufino Tamayo and Jose Luis Cuevas in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Like them he uses the personal to confront the political, historical and cultural and to illuminate his indigenous roots and mestizo reality.
René Hugo Arceo: "They Have Dried the Earth with Their Tears", 2005, Linocut, 24" x 18".
René Hugo Arceo, Ollin Yarema, linocut, 2004
Discusion, 2001 Linocut
Guatemalan Women, 1991 Linocut
"Whitening IN". Print by René Hugo Arceo
America Central Hoy, 1983 Lithograph
Meditacion, 2003 Linocut
Homage to Carlos Cortez, 1999 Linocut
They Have Dried the Earth with their Tears, 2005 LinocutVEDI http://www.visualarttoday.com/Exhibitions/ReneArceo/index.html
©All images copyright of Rene Hugo Arceohttp://www.arceoart.us/
Local Artists in Purgatory, 1996 Linocut
Corazon Ritmico, 2005 Linocut
Spiritual Dance, 2001 Linocut
Futuro Obama, 2009, by René Hugo Arceo
El Poeta
Pacman
Nostradamus
Magical Cat Adventure
Snake