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Gabriel Figueroa

1907 Mexico City, Mexico - 1997 Mexico City, Mexico

BiographyGabriel Figueroa was born in 1907 in Mexico City, Mexico. He and his brother were orphans and were raised by aunts. He attended Academy of San Carlos where he studied painting, and also studied violin at the National Conservatory. Shortly after leaving the Academy he became a photographer and took portraits to earn a living and eventually opened his own studio. In 1932 he went on to work in the film industry as a still photographer which eventually led to his accomplished career as a cinematographer. Figueroa attributed muralists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueriros and Jose Clemente Orozco for influencing his work. They were fans of his films and referred to them as murals in motion. One of the films he is known for is Allá en el Rancho Grande (1936), which won an award at the Venice Film Festival. Throughout his career, he filmed over 235 movies and received awards at Cannes Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival and Venice Film Festival. Figueroa was known as the one of the most prominent cinematographers in Mexico and was credited with starting the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. He died in Mexico City in 1997. In 2013 LACMA held a retrospective of his life’s work, Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa—Art and Film, which was later shown at El Museo del Barrio in New York in 2015.

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