Many others are in the hands of the elders of small villages here in Mexico, and they are preserved like holy writ, because they contain all the teachings, all the beliefs of the ancestors. I know that sounds corny, but I wanted to know why this man had devoted his whole life to such a seemingly frivolous activity as painting with water and thin color on toothy paper, and I knew at once that this was at least part of the answer. Alfredo Guati Rojo was born in Cuernavaca on December 1, 1918. Fresco painting is really a type of watercolor, using a prepared white wall instead of paper. Alfredo Guati Rojo received his Master's degree in plastic arts from the San Carlos Academy in 1940.
Watercolors do what they want to do.
No one can really say they have dominated the technique. Every time I start a new painting I am terrified that I will fail. I had stared at the beautiful face of a woman in one of his watercolors on the wall in the anteroom to his office before he arrived. It was rich and alive. The colors were so sure, the shape of the face, the eyes, the lips, all so exquisitely formed they might have been a tinted photograph.