Pedro CORONEL

Do you own a piece by Pedro Coronel and would you like to know more about the work and its value? Our Experts will carry out a free appraisal of your painting, provide you with an estimate of the market price, and help you to sell it at the best price.

Status, price and estimation of the artist Pedro CORONEL

Price of a painting by Coronel: €60 – €294,000

Estimate for a drawing or watercolour by the artist at auction: €300 – €15,000

Artist’s quote for the sale of a print: €60 – €4,400

Taken from a sculpture: € 2,700 – € 10,700

If you wish to have a painting by the artist appraised, our experts are at your disposal for a free valuation.

Pedro Coronel: painter and collector

Mexican painter, sculptor and illustrator Pedro Coronel was born on 25 March 1922 in Zecantes, where he died in 1985. His father and mother were musicians: his younger brother Rafael became a well-known painter in the Moors.

Coronel trained at the National School of Painting and Sculpture La Esmeralda in Mexico City between 1940 and 1945, learning painting and sculpture from Juan Cruz, Grancisco Zúñiga and Santos Balmori.

In 1946 he travelled to the United States and France: he lived in Paris for ten years from the late 1940s to the 1950s.

In Paris he met Victor Brauner and the sculptor Constantin Brancusi. He exhibited for the first time in Mexico City in 1954: the Mexican diplomat Octavio Paz, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature, noticed his talent and promoted him around the world. During the 1960s, Coronel was a teacher at La Esmeralda: at that time, he worked with Mathias Goeritz, Rufino Tamayo and Pedro Friedberg at the Camino Real Hotel in Mexico City.

Throughout his life Pedro accumulated a large collection of pre-Hispanic, African, Greco-Roman, medieval, graphic and Egyptian art: he managed to acquire works by Goya, Picasso, Miró and Chagall.

Generación de la Ruptura

Pedro Coronel was part of the Generación de la Ruptura (Breakaway generation), a movement that included Santos Balmori and Rufino Tamayo. This movement had the ambition to reinvent Mexican painting from the foundations, in order to find a new way to link the past to the present. Pedro Coronel was influenced by Expressionism, Picasso and by the themes and colours of the pre-Hispanic art he collected, but also by Mexican murals. Rufino’s abstract influence will be more pronounced in his early work.

Human anxieties and abstraction – the work of Pedro Coronel

Pedro Coronel’s career began as a sculptor and later evolved into painting. Most of his work was produced between 1949 and 1984, consisting mainly of oils on canvas and isorel, but also of sculptures in onyx and sand.

In the beginning he worked in Paris with Victor Brauner and the sculptor Constantin Brancusi: the influence of sculpture will be seen in the formal treatment of the paintings.

The themes mainly dealt with are human fears, but also sensuality and eroticism, as can be seen in “Venus Mexica” and “La dama de las frutas” from 1949. Finally, Pedro Coronel tended towards abstraction: his works juxtapose reality and fantasy, episodes of daily life and mythology. Coronel’s late work is characterised by a strong use of colour: the teaching of Rufino Tamayo is still evident.

Recognising Pedro Coronel’s signature

Like many artists, Pedro Coronel did not sign all of his works. However, you will find below an example of the signatures to give you an idea. Variations of these signatures do exist, do not hesitate to contact one of our experts to formally authenticate a signature.

Appraise and sell a painting by Pedro Coronel

If you own a Pedro Coronel painting or any other sculpture, ask for a free estimate via our online form.

You will then be contacted by a member of our team of experts and auctioneers to give you an independent view of the market price of your painting. In the event of a sale, our specialists will also advise you on the various options available to sell your work at the best price.