YURI ZATARAIN
Yuri Zatarain: a Mexican contemporary artist was born in 1972.
He is one of various artists with a great influence at present times. His multi-disciplinary practice -besides painting, includes different areas as sculpture, literature, and metaphysics.
His innovations in the usage of organic colors and other materials (not traditionally used before in his artistic creations), has been fundamental on the resurfaces of his contemporary artwork.
At the beginning of his path, he started painting using broad lines, focusing on the strength and nudity in the soul of his pieces, winning worldwide nominations/titles and awards.
Yuri Zatarain has exhibited his artwork in museums and galleries of Mexico, United States and Europe. His artworks usually show geometric forms, vibrant colorful and fearless compositions result in the sensation of energy and movement. Zatarain's paintings has been exhibited in museums and private collections, and he has been considered one of the most outstanding artists in Mexico at the present time.
His artwork embraces the power of the written word, achieving for his pieces the quality of becoming a portal to open our minds and to use his ingenious creativity to make the individual to reflection on love.
He keeps inspiring generations and allow art lovers around the world to join it. The master has been celebrated for having a unique vision that leverages his moment in time and space to reflect and visualize the future, daring to change the world.
The Law of Art
“To be unique, you should practice on being yourself.”
Yuri Zatarain
ARTIST RETROSPECTIVE
We are facing an artwork that emanates at that point where design meets emotion in this era in which technological art is looking for its place in the exhibition rooms, there is where Yuri Zatarain’s art is breaking out. A contemporary creator that flies high but also invades space with a romantic sense and emotions. Zatarain’s solid and well-structured proposal has defined with clarity his field/territory, his desires, and his projection. His art is fearless and daring and, in every moment, he assumes the risk of its innovations with consistency and responsibility.
Emerging from an artistic Mexican tradition that deliberately challenge the reigning ideas on the surface and the form in the paintings, the artist has been looking to transform reality and possibilities of the environment: what is a painting, what it could be and how could be… Free of perfectionists formulas o precalculated ideas, Zatarain’s artwork becomes a receptacle for a personal but at the same time universal poetry. In his case, painting intentionality the unknown of other worlds produces a more loyal representation of the physical world experience.
Lupina Lara
Mexican art promotion director
She is an author of 19 editorial titles about Mexican Art, founder and writer of the magazine “Resumen, Compendio de Creadores Mexicanos” integrated by more than 130 published … in which she has achieve to broadcast more than 250 artists conforming one of the most complete compilations of Mexican plastic.
Z A T A R A I N
Everything started when his delight in drawing emerges. At the age of five he discovered his impressive skills for drawing of his classmate -who drew with impressive skills. Watching and admiring the creativity of the child, inspired him a lot, as at the end of each class, his classmate gave him the drawings, making Yuri feel motivated to tell his father they were his own work. Thus the father with admiration for the works, always reminded Yuri: "one day in the future you will become the best painter in the world", Yuri, -knowing he was liyng about the authorship of the drawings, commenced to practice again and again until he achieves drawing by himself even better and that was how he won his first painting contest at the age of 6, determining the artist's present passion for painting.
In 1985, at the age of thirteen, he achieves his first individual paint exhibit named “BEGIN TO FLY” or “START FLYING”at the NATIONAL FINE ARTS INSTITUTE of Mazatlan, Sinaloa in Mexico. It was there where the great emotion and satisfaction of his own performance, impulse him to keep believing in his own talent: Creating from his heart a valid expression for each being’s emotion. Manifesting freshness and spontaneous creativity.
He completed his professional studies in industrial design in 1994 at Guadalajara Autonomy University (UAG for its acronym in English). At the age of twenty-two the artist opens a studio office to work on the development of his own artistic proposal.
He conquered the attention of the specialized critics in Jalisco. In 1996 at the age of twenty-four, Yuri Zatarain won his first award “ARTE JOVEN DE JALISCO” (Jalisco’s young art) for the creation with pieces in diverse dramatical techniques in ivory color imagining a different language in each creation.
It was at this point that his outstanding work generated the attention of the owner of the Gallery Flying Turtle, Sandy Schoenberger, so in 1998 he participated in various individual exhibitions at her art gallery Flying Turtle in Orlando Florida. From where his artistic tradition of figurative bodies/silhouettes that deffy deliberately preconceived ideas of the forms started precisely at the collection “SOULS”.
The art emerged in a way that the figures became receivers of a very personal and universal poetry, as he used the BEING as an inspiration to explode sensations and emotions in the audience with the purpose of making them capable of expanding their consciousness.
He has worked on various art projects and exhibitions thorough United States and Mexico. In 2000 Zatarain was invited to participate in an art exhibition in the Latin-American Art Museum (MOLAA for its acronym in English) at long Beach, California, He presented the collection titled “STANDING MEN” using large format combined with huge strong strokes, exploiting an intention between canvas and painting, creating a piece of art in which the viewer/observer could heal their emotions becoming the artist intentions into a real manifestation containing in itself a conscious evolution.
Zatarain’s tight relationship between his art and his personal evolutionary study complements with an extraordinary expression between sculpture and painting allowing him to be considered for important exhibitions around the world.
In 2001 he participated in an individual exhibition in Koelnmesse, Cologne in Germany. It was a watershed in his career as the exhibit “LOVE IS COOKED ON A SLOW FIRE” introducing him to the art world in Europe having remarkable success in the Nordic countries and elevating his art to a great scale.
Zatarain uses a vast majority of resources to elaborate his art (wood, fabric, canvas, concrete, metal etc.) in general any plain surface can inspire his creative work.
At the beginning of 2002 Zaratarin started to implement large formats so the viewer could get into THE BEING.
At the end of 2004 in his exhibition “CELEBRATION” at the private Donna Karan Gallery’s in New York USA, he composed his own collection on a tour around United States. The following year he participated with sculptures and paintings in Paris, France at the FIAC (internation Fair of Contemporary Art) and in 2007 presented “SECRETS” in Verona Italy, winning nominations/designations. He was awarded with the Gaviota award given by The State of Jalisco at Casa the Mexico in Chicago Illinois and was also designated as art ambassador in United States with the opportunity to paint a Mural for the Black Coffee foundation with some of the most recognized painters in Mexico at the present time.
Zatarain´s exploration in art achieves transcendence in large individual exhibitions around the world guiding him into a very emotional exhibit named “IT’S YOU” in 2015 at The Museum of Contemporary Art of Sonora, Mexico (MUSAS), writing a love story in which he intended in his writings through various techniques from his multiple art expression. The very same year he was awarded with the Michelangelo International prize, artist at the Jubilee, Palcco Cardinal Cesi in Rome, Italy. Also, he has the honor through FAO to gift Queen Letizia an art piece at the Palace of Zarzuela in Spain, event organized by the UN.
In 2018 Yuri Zatarain created a movement named “I AM” in which young artists participated to foment the art inside Jalisco state.
Nowadays the exhibition “BEINGS OF LIGHT” is at the Museum of Oaxaca painters (MUPO). The exhibition has fifty-two pieces of art among which some of them are sculptures. The exhibition has been defined as a philosophical part of the human being, showing the nudity of his interior so the receiver achieves to identify the universe that resides inside each of ourselves.