Lo Feo de Este Mundo I (from "Homage to Quevedo")

Jose Luis Cuevas

“Lo Feo de Este Mundo I” translates to “The Ugly of This World”. Cuevas depicts the gates of hell where a “holy” man wearing a mitre, lounges with a list of names beneath his elbow, checking the peasants who stand before him, who are waiting to find out their fate. In the background a figure is about to enter a dark space.

This image a one of sixteen images included in a portfolio titled “Homage to Quevedo”, published and printed in San Francisco by Collectors Press in 1969.

Spanish satirist Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), who was born to nobility, has been labeled “Spain’s Jonathan Swift” for his critique of the established aristocracy’s grip on the common man. He was accused by King Philip IV, of placing a copy of his “Carta a Luis XVII” beneath the king’s napkin, leading to Quevedo's arrest and imprisonment, which affected his health and ultimately ended his life.

Quevedo's poems “Suenos” (Dreams) are a Goya-like nightmare where people of every class and trade are castigated without mercy and are driven to their personal hells. Quevedo commented: “Upon the whole matter, the policy of hell is admirable, where every man has his place, according to his condition."

Jose Luis Cuevas was born in Mexico City on February 26, 1934. Cuevas briefly attended the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado 'La Esmeralda' in Mexico City and later studied graphic arts at the Institución de Enseñanza Universitaria also in Mexico City.

During the 1950s, Cuevas joined a group of young artists called the "Rupture-Generation", including Alberto Gironella, Enrique Echeverri, Pedro Coronel, Manuel Felguerez and Francisco Icaza. This politically-active group became opposed to the socialist artists favored by the Mexican government and rebelled against the official social-content mural art and became active in defining the contemporary artistic panorama of Mexico.

Cuevas’ first exhibition was mounted at the Galera Prisse in Mexico City in 1953. The following year he exhibited at the Pan American Union Building in Washington, DC. Cuevas was subsequently invited to work in various workshops worldwide, including the Tamarind Workshop in Los Angeles, California; and Poligrafa Obra Gráfica in Barcelona in 1981. He also worked at the Kyron Ediciones Gráficas Limitadas Kyron in Mexico City.