Pedro Friedeberg is a contemporary Mexican artist best known for his surrealist sculptures and prints. His eclectic body of work unites architectural imagery and psychedelic patterns with occult and dazzling iconography.

He expressed interest in art since he was little. His mother said that when he was 2 years old he liked to sit in front of the  Basilica of Santa Maria Novella , in Florence, and try to draw it. In his youth, he was captivated by the Renaissance architecture of the churches and the  Tower of Pisa .

Born Pietro Enrico Hoffman Landsberg on January 11, 1936 in Florence, Italy , the son of German Jewish immigrants fleeing the Holocaust, he and his family moved to Mexico when Friedeberg was just 3 years old. Influenced by the books on Renaissance and Gothic architecture that he saw as a child, Friedeberg studied to become an architect at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City in 1957.

« GAUDÍ AND FACTEUR CHEVA INSPIRED ME AT THE BEGINNING OF MY CAREER. ALSO, THE ARCHITECT MAX CETTO , WHO HAD THE EXQUISITE TASTE OF THE FORTIES, AND THE ARCHITECT VLADIMIR KASPE, WHO WAS THE FIRST ONE I WORKED WITH IN 1951 AND TO WHOM I RUINED SEVERAL PLANS THAT WERE STILL DRAWN BY HAND.

PEDRO FRIEDEBERG FOR HOTBOOK .

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However; The young Friedeberg did not complete his studies as he began to draw designs that went against the conventional forms of the 50s, including completely implausible structures. His work caught the attention of German sculptor Mathias Goeritz who encouraged him to continue his career as an artist. Although his work finds echo in two of the most exciting artistic movements of the 60s – POP and Op Art -; His work is more related to late surrealism.

«THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE WHO HAVE INFLUENCED ME. I THINK THAT TO BE AN ARTIST, YOU START BY IMITATING OTHER ARTISTS. IN MY CASE, I STARTED BY COPYING MASTERS LIKE HANS HOLBEIN, TINTORETTO AND PAOLO VERONESE . LATER, I LOOKED AT MORE MODERN ARTISTS LIKE SALVADOR DALÍ, ESCHER, DIEGO RIVERA AND, THE GREATEST MEXICAN MASTER FOR ME, JUAN O'GORMAN ."

PETER FRIEDEBERG .

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In particular, the artist's work reveals his close ties with the main European surrealists who had also found refuge in Mexico: Leonora Carrington; Kati Horna; Edward James; Alice Rahon and Remedios Varo, who were irreverent, rejecting the social and political art that dominated at the time. Friedeberg was also deeply inspired by Mathias Goeritz Brunner, especially his Dadaist tendencies, which found expression in the avant-garde group known as “Los hartos” (the “Hartists”) of the early 1960s. Friedeberg's work combines all of these influences into something completely, unique and unmistakably his own.

"SURREALISM IS THE ART OF DREAMS, FANTASY AND IMAGINATION."

PETER FRIEDEBERG .

Although Friedeberg is an accomplished painter, he is famous for his ironic furniture designs , particularly the "butterfly chair" and the "sedan chair . " Both pieces were originally designed in the 1960s as a rejection of international/modernist aesthetics and functionalism.

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After designing his first chair, Friedeberg went on to design tables, sofas and loveseats. This body of work, along with Friedeberg 's obsessively crowded and meticulously detailed canvases , often included references to Tantric scriptures; Aztec codices; Catholicism; Hinduism and symbols of occultism . By 1963, Friedeberg had also begun making entirely sculptural works of distorted bodies with appendages taken from religious statues found in antique stores and flea markets.

«I JUST MADE A CHAIR AND A TABLE WITH FIGURES OF HANDS. THEY'RE SILLY, I MADE THEM FOR FUN. AFTER THAT THEY ASKED ME FOR SOME OTHER FURNITURE THAT IS ACTUALLY MORE RELATED TO ART THAN TO MY ARCHITECTURE STUDIES. WHEN I STUDIED MY DEGREE, EVERYTHING WE LEARNED WAS VERY SQUARE, NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT I DID. I HATE MODERN CHAIRS FROM RENOWNED DESIGNERS, THEY SEEM HORRIBLE AND PRETENTIOUS TO ME, I PREFER A CHAIR FROM THE TEPITO NEIGHBORHOOD .

PEDRO FRIEDEBERG FOR HOTBOOK .

In 2016, the Franz Mayer Museum  of CDMX presented  The Irrational House: Pedro Friedeberg, art and design ,  an exhibition by the Mexican designer, which offered an overview of his work processes; influenced by various disciplines; presenting a variety of design works that respond to different interests, showing the different conceptions of design throughout his career.

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Pedro Friedeberg 's pieces are part of the most important collections, private or public, around the world. Friedeberg 's strange compositions and eccentric attitude have earned him international recognition. Today, the artist's works are among the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City , the Los Angeles County Museum of Art ; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington; D.C. ​and the Museum of Modern Art in New York . Friedeberg currently lives and works in Mexico City.

Source: https://www.yaconic.com/pedro-friedeberg-surrealismo-excentrico/