Esteban Urbieta

Born on September 13, 1973 in Juchitán de Zaragoza, Oaxaca, México

Esteban Urbieta grows up assisting his father in his auto paint and body shop. From a young age, he survives the death of two brothers, producing an internal isolation that is reflected in his silence and introversion, but in which his passion to express himself visually arises. In the workshop, he loves assembling different scrap parts—welding them together, creating portraits. At the age of 17, his family meets the architect Alvaro Guerra Torres who, impressed by his work, takes him under his wing to the great city of Oaxaca to follow his passion for art.

In 1998, Urbieta enrolls in the Casa de la Cultura Oaxaqueña (a cutlure center for the arts), and his talent provides him a scholarship at the “Rufino Tamayo” Plastic Arts Workshop. He excels as an outstanding student of Master Shinzaburo Takeda, a Japanese-Oaxacan master artist, in techniques such as lithography and woodcut. There, he also practices formal painting techniques, sculpture, ceramics, vitreous enamel, and learns Japanese techniques from Yasuhiko Miyazaki. In 1999, he is accepted as an exponent for the 1st Biennial of Painting and Engraving "Paul Gauguin" organized by the Autonomous University of Guerrero.

With his diverse and experimental techniques, Urbieta explores themes of the relationship between human, animal and nature, drawing inspiration from the folklore of his native land of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. He relates these in harmonic, maternal and loving dialogues. The tree, a symbol of the family, is a central part of his colorful work; working with pigments, hair, clay, paper, jute, and hammock thread. The woman, as a ship that carries life, is portrayed as fertile, always surrounded by a vortex of fish and birds.

In the more contemporary series "Birds that sing inks", Urbieta presents a monochromatic palette of ink, pigment and coffee with egg tempera on paper. The birds, at once trapped in a gourd as edifying tributes, are symbols of freedom and sustainability. This ease of bold, intense and at the same time gentle gestures has led him to discover another phase of his expression and experimentation.

Urbieta surprises us and at the same time delights us with his multifaceted visual work through his screen-printed literary illustrations in collaboration with poets such as Edgar Saavedra and Javier Paláu Hernández. His works are part of important collections in Oaxaca and the nation, as well as in the U.S. and Europe.