Juan Soriano (1920-2006) Juan Soriano was born in Guadalajara.  Soriano moved to Mexico City in 1935, where he came in contact with the Mexican muralists and surrealists. Since then, Soriano has been involved with theatre and literature, as well as visual art; and is one of Mexico's leading scenographers and costume designers.

 

In 1958, he helped found the theater group "Poetry at Full Voice" along with Octavio Paz, Leonora Carrington, and others. Soriano began sculpting around this time and was given a retrospective of his work in three dimensions in 1966, at the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts, where his complete oeuvre was surveyed two decades later.

 

Juan Soriano has exhibited in Guadalajara, Cuernavaca, Guanajuato, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Rome, Paris (a retrospective at the Luxembourg Museum), Madrid (a retrospective at the Reina Sofia Museum), and other centers. Between 1970 and 1974 Soriano lived in Rome, and now splits his time between Mexico City and Paris. The Mexican government has awarded him the Premio Nacional de Artes and named him a Creator Emeritus of the National System of Creative Artists; and France, has recognized him as a Knight of Arts and Letters.