Gabriel Guerra (sculptor)

{{Short description|Mexican sculptor (1847–1893)}}

Gabriel Guerra (1847 – 3 November 1893) was a Mexican sculptor. He was born in Unión de San Antonio, Jalisco and trained at Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (National School of Fine Arts) in Mexico City where he studied with Miguel Noreña.{{cite book|title=Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean Art|pages=321–322|editor=Jane Turner|publisher=Macmillan Reference Limited|year=2000}}

File:SceneTortureCuautemocMonumentDF.jpg's torture on a monument to him on the Paseo de la Reforma]]

File:Gabriel Guerra - Una burla al amor (Venus y cupido).jpg

Significant monumental sculptures by Guerra include Torture of Cuauhtémoc (1886), which was one of a group of bronze reliefs by various artists cast for the Monument to Cuauhtémoc in Mexico City, and General Carlos Pacheco on commission for the state of Morelos. The former depicts Cuauhtémoc's encounter with Hernán Cortés, and was opened to the public on 21 August 1887 at a total cost of over 97,000 pesos and a total weight of over 11,000 kilograms of bronze.{{cite book |author=Fernández |first=Justino |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CknnZqC42SUC |title=A Guide to Mexican Art: From Its Beginnings to the Present |publisher=University of Chicago Press |others=Translated by Joshua C. Taylor |year=1969 |isbn=978-0-226-24421-1 |pages=132 |author-link=Justino Fernández |accessdate=2009-05-16}}{{cite book|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=jYzWhnckLUcC|title=Monuments of progress: modernization and public health in Mexico City, 1876-1910|pages=99–100|author=Claudia Agostoni|publisher=UNAM|year=2003|accessdate=2009-05-16 | isbn=978-0-87081-734-2}} The latter was completed in plaster in 1892 and cast posthumously in bronze in 1894.

Guerra's work in secular subjects marked a departure from the Biblical themes that had dominated Mexican sculpture of the mid-nineteenth century.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-J8SN03--BIC|title=Vision Y Sentido de La Plastica Mexicana (in Spanish)|pages=337–340|author1=Manuel G Revilla |author2=Elisa García Barragán |publisher= UNAM |year=2006|accessdate=2009-05-16 | isbn=978-970-32-3420-2}} Guerra's interest in portraying Mexican historic subjects from the perspective of the country's indigenous inhabitants marked him as part of a politically significant liberal artistic movement that was active late in the century.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lT84yyDd_uMC|title=Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820-1980|pages=35|author1=Dawn Adès |author2=Guy Brett |author3=Hayward Gallery |author4=Stanton Loomis Catlin |author5=Rosemary O'Neill) |publisher=Yale University Press|year=1989|accessdate=2009-05-16 | isbn=978-0-300-04561-1}} Guerra died at the age of 46.