The Meyer East Gallery - Artist Biography

Sergio Bustamante is known internationally for his instantly recognizable creations. He might easily be mistaken as one of those artists who are more a legend than an actual being. As an internationally known artist he has a magic Midas-like touch in the wide variety of media in which he lays his hands (from paper maché and oil painting to ceramic and bronze sculpture). Bustamante infuses every one of his creations with such life and love and a limitless passion for both, there’s no question, no doubt, not even the slightest apprehension that only someone very much connected to his ancestors, to his culture, to the cosmos and to the unknown could be responsible for such wild, wondrous and beautiful creations.

In fact, the only thing more impressive than Sergio Bustamante and his art would be Sergio Bustamante without his art. Having grown up in the mystical pungent world of Mexico—at a time when Old Mexico had begun, reluctantly, morphing into Modern Mexico—it seems almost impossible to think Bustamante and his art could’ve turned out any other way. Born in the late 1950s into the arid region of Sinaloa, in northern Mexico, in which his rancher-merchant father grew and sold vegetables, where the people were as hard as the dirt itself but just as often—and paradoxically—neighborly and convivial; where the rugged mountains he woke up to each morning and where his favorite books were 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Treasure Island and Journey to the Center of the Earth. His grandfather, who’d immigrated to Mexico from China, opened up his own restaurant in Sinaloa before dying when Bustamante was just five, and where his mother died before he even finished second grade, resulting in a move to live with his aunt in Guadalajara, Jalisco, in the south of Mexico. It is a land rich with artisans and craftsman; people who’ve been working with their hands and their imaginations for generations. “When you’re creative, a lot has to do with Mexican life here,” says Bustamante from his home and workshop in Tlaquepaque, Mexico. “The colors are so vivid. Experiences abound. The polarity of rich and poor is so extreme, the mix in the blood. The whole context, it’s such a rich place, such a rich culture.” Such a perfect atmosphere for an artist as inherently gifted as Bustamante.

Encouraged by his aunt to explore his creative gifts, Bustamante studied architecture at the University of Guadalajara. Realizing before he’d even received his degree that jobs for recently graduated architecture students just weren’t there, Bustamante began creating and selling artworks his junior year. After graduating, he then began collaborating with some people who were making ceramics, a generous bunch who shared their craft with him and let him pursue his own vision. “I was very lucky and it was very easy for me in the beginning,” says Bustamante. “I opened my own studio and started selling to stores all over—Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s, and Harrod’s. I also started creating large paper maché sculpture and other works that I’d made out of brass, bronze and silver.”

Oddly enough, just when his career was taking off, in 1972, Bustamante relocated to Amsterdam. The decision was as much personal as professional… a challenge to himself on both levels: he went abroad not only to expand his skills in paint and design better but also to experience what his grandfather had gone through and to learn from that. “My grandfather was a great man for me, and most of the things I have—being independent economically—I owe to him,” explains Bustamante. “Going over to Amsterdam, I learned more about painting and design but I also learned how to be alone and self-sufficient, the way my grandfather had been. I didn’t feel so insecure after living over there by myself for two years.”

In 1975, not long after his return to Mexico, he established his Family Workshop Studio in Tlaquepaque, where he’s lived, worked and created ever since. “Tlaquepaque is the ideal place for working and having a studio,” gushes Bustamante. “People here have been working with their hands for generations. They’re true artisans. When you’re talking about dreams, they understand exactly. It’s like working with your family. You start to think together.”

Ever curious and ever ready to create—anything—Bustamante’s greatest challenge comes in choosing what it is he wants to create next, and in what medium. “I’ve been switching from one medium to another all my life,” laughs Bustamante. “I’m always asking, ‘How can a similar piece be fashioned in another medium?”

More an artist than a craftsman, “because I’m always continuing with my designs,” he says, Bustamante puts his all into every piece: his face, his love, his wealth of stories. “You always tell stories with your work,” says Bustamante, who still loves to read (he’s just finished Philip Roth and Orhan Pamuk’s latest books). “I’m so obsessive with my work. There are stories behind all my pieces. And so much love in them too—I put a lot of love into everything I create.”

One of the more compelling forms he continues to explore is his bronze and ceramic sculptures. Often cast of the same strange and surreal creatures who inhabit his paintings (fish-headed humans, mystical figures draped in heavy dresses, and plenty of half-moons and half-suns), Bustamante has grown to love his bronzes and ceramics more and more. “Colors are more poetic,” he says, “but the bronzes and ceramics are more abstract.” Although, only as abstract as Bustamante’s imagination will allow—and Bustamante’s imagination allows for almost everything.

He also likes to put a heady dose of playfulness—and magic—into his work. His monumental bronze sculpture, “In Search of Reason,” along the malecon (the boardwalk) beach at Puerto Vallarta stands sixty feet high and has a ladder that visitors can climb. “I like getting people to interact with it, with my art,” says Bustamante of the sculpture, which features one of his internationally known figures at the bottom of the staircase-ladder reaching up toward two smaller triangular-headed figures who are about halfway up the ladder that reaches into the sky. “It’s about freedom.” Other public works by Bustamante are installed in the Guadalajara Zoo, a fountain in Puerto Vallarta, and a large permanent installation in Tlaquepaque

Many of Bustamante’s works are as magical as they are known. “Magic is something in your mind, something you help to create,” emphasizes Bustamante, who uses colors and design the way a poet uses words. “The magic in some of my things is because you chose to show these worlds, shapes, these atmospheres that maybe other people haven’t imagined. I try to impact people and seduce them. It’s like trying to make them love.” Trying. And succeeding.