Jesús Álvarez Amaya, painter, muralist and printmaker, was born on 19 November 1925 in the La Merced neighborhood of Mexico City. He came from a modest background, working as a baker in his youth. He studied art at the Escuela de Arte para Trabajadores (Art School for Workers) and with noted artist Amaya Ramón Alva de la Canal. He later was an assistant to Diego Rivera for the mural on the façade of the Theater of the Insurgents, and a mural for the Olympic Stadium at the Ciudad Universitaria in Mexico City.

Amaya is best known for his political and social themed paintings and murals. He had his first contact with mural painting at the Mexican Naval headquarters painting a portion of the sky on a mural. In 1959, he painted his first solo mural related to the Popol Vuh in the dining room of the Hotel Maya-Land at Chichén Itzá. From 1955 on he painted the murals “Hidalgo en el pretérito, presente y futuro de México” in Mexicali; “El hombre nuevo” in Misantla; and “Benito Juárez” in Martinez de la Torre, Veracruz. His last mural was “La comunicación postal” at the Vicente Guerrero Library in Mexico City. It was a 2006 recreation of a mural he originally painted for the Centro Postal Mecanizado México in 1974, but destroyed in 2004.

Amaya was most prolific as a printmaker. He became a member of El Taller de Gráfica Popular in 1955 at a time when many of the older artists were leaving. In the late 1950s into the 1960s, the Taller workshop was abandoned. In 1967, Amaya and other artists decided to reactivate the organization: they obtained the keys to the facility, rehabilitated it and worked to attract young artists. Amaya was general provisional coordinator of the Taller from 1967 to 1987, when he was named coordinator for life. He was a lifelong militant communist, involved in activities mostly through El Taller de Gráfica Popular. During the 1968 student uprising, Alvarez led the group in the creation of hundreds of posters. This led to repression of the group, but they were able to reopen in 1969, with the organization including writers and artists.

Jesús Álvarez Amaya died on 21 June 2010 in Mexico City.