Vladimir Cora

In 2010, Cora donated a work called The Biggest Heart On Earth to the city of Guanajuato and the Festival Internacional Cervantino. The piece was vandalized with graffiti and the removal of several parts. The bronze sculpture is in the shape of a human heart, which represents Nayarit, with twenty niches that represent the state’s twenty municipalities. The piece was taken out of Guanajuato because the city could not guarantee its security.

The Casa Museo Vladimir Cora was founded by the artist in 1999. It contains a collection of his works from the 1980s to the present as well as pieces from the Castro Leñero brothers, Rufino Tamayo, Francisco Toledo, Sebastián, Manuel Felguérez, Vicente Rojo and Gabriel Macotela. It also holds between two and four temporary exhibitions each year in of paintings, graphic work and sculpture. The building dates from the 19th century.

He has defined himself as a romantic who should have been born in the 18th century. He met his wife in 1986 and they eloped. They were separated for three years, reunited in 1989 and shortly after his first daughter Adilene was born. They did not have the religious ceremony until 1999, with painter Manuel Felguérez and his wife Mercedes as witnesses. The couple has two other children, Vladimir and Lica. He does not like to fly and prefers to travel in automobile when he has to travel.

Cora has had over 150 individual exhibitions and has participated in many more collective ones. He had his very first exhibition in 1974 in Nayarit. He began to be able to live off his art around 1981, when he had an exhibition in Puerto Vallarta, where all thirty three pieces sold in one night. He used the money to buy a car. In 1982 he entered two pieces at the first Rufino Tamayo biennale in Oaxaca. One received a prize which allowed him to meet the famous Oaxacan painter. Since then he has had his work exhibited in a wide variety of galleries and cultural centers in Mexico such as the Museo Regional de Nayarit, the Instituto Regional de Bellas Ares in Mazatlan, the Ex-Convento del Carmen in Guadalajara, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Culiacán and the Galería HB in Mexico City. In 2004, he created a series of pieces such as paintings, graphic work and sculpture with fellow Mexican artist Jazzamoart and exhibited them. The series Los Apóstoles was on display in front of the Palacio de Bellas Artes in 2010. In 2013, he exhibited a series called “Reminiscencias” at the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, of which he is a member. Outside of Mexico he has had exhibitions in Palm Springs, CA, Havana, Lima and Miami. He exhibited at the Kodak Gallery in the SoHo section of New York in 2008.

Vladimir Cora (born 1951, Acaponeta, Nayarit) is a Mexican painter and sculptor based in the state of Nayarit, whose work has been recognized by various awards and membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana. He discovered art at age fifteen, after deciding that he could not be a musician. He received training in Tijuana and Mexico City, with his first success in the 1980s. His style has been described as neo-figurative, minimalist and coarse, and he creates his works in series usually related to the apostles, flowers, birds and women, especially those related to Nayarit. He has had over 150 individual exhibitions both in Mexico and abroad and continues to work from his home state.