Biography

Luis Filcer was born on December 4, 1927 in Zhitomir, Ukraïne as Lev Filtzer.
To escape the pogroms of Stalin, he fled Russia as a baby together with this Jewish family. They eventually got settled in Mexico. After reading Irving Stones ‘Lust for Life’, a fictional account of the life of van Gogh, he decided to be a painter. Other inspirations were Orozco, Goya and Rembrandt. Although he was interested in art from an early age, it took the sale of one of his paintings for his family to accept his calling. Strongly influenced by the life of van Gogh, he began to paint and draw the struggles in the lives of ordinary people, something he continued to do the rest of his career.

He started his art studies at the most important art-academy of Mexico: Academia San Carlos, aged 17, and later studied at the private school of the famous teacher José Bandasano. In 1949 he won the silver medal in a contest for Mexican painting, after which he won two golden medals in 1950 and 1953. He represented Mexico at three biënnales: Chili, Japan and England. It is also during this period he received a Mexican grant for two years, to study and work at the art academies of Paris, Rome and Amsterdam.
His work has been shown in over 345 exhibitions and 67 museums around the world.
He took part in one of the most important group exhibitions, organized by the Palace of Fine Arts: 'Masterworks of Mexican Art', that toured the world for fifteen years. Filcer continued travelling to Europe, and he settled down in Holland. After marriage and fathering two daughters in de Rijp, he moved to Amsterdam and after 20 years returned to Mexico.
In 1988 he took part in a group exhibition 'Twenty expressionist artists' in the Grand Palais in Paris. In 1990 he exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City on the occasion of the museum’s 25th-birthday. In 1994 he had his largest exhibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Mexico City. This museum is the largest in Latin-America, with its 2500 m2 of expo-space, and showed a complete overview of his work.

Filcer was regarded as one of the most important modern Expressionist painters of the 20th century in Mexico (art critic Antonio Rodriguez).
He painted the contradictions in man, an indictment against the heartlessness of those in power against the weak, injustice and loneliness, bishops and lawyers, fishermen, beggars and prostitutes. Yet his work is always a celebration of life, which was most explicit in his depiction of circus performers, caricatures, Brazilian carnival and flamenco dance. He liked to paint his daily life experience and fantasies, always reflecting on ideas for improving the future.
Filcer: "As long as I have something to say, I will keep on painting!" which indeed resulted in a lifelong commitment to his art.
Luis left his studio overlooking the valley of Mexico City, to move to San Miguel de Allende in March 2017, where he passed away on the 19th of July 2018 at the age of 91, leaving the treasure of his life work to his wife Clarita and his daughters in Holland.
This website contains a selection from the Dutch collection, painted between the late forties and the mid eighties.