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Ceramic Artist - Tiburcio Soteno Fernández
Tiburcio Soteno Fernández belongs to a large and important family of ceramic artists. Born in 1952 in the town of Metepec, Tiburcio learned his skills in early childhood.
This autobiographical scene shows Tiburcio as a small boy, dressed in yellow. Along with his parents and siblings, he is surrounded by brightly painted figurines and toys such as whistles and money banks.
Tiburcio specializes in making clay sculptures known as 'trees of life'. Extremely fragile, these often take a narrative form. The scene opposite is a detail from a metre-high 'tree of life'.
According to Tiburcio, the idea for the 'tree of life' originated with his mother, Modesta Fernández. In the 1940s she started to model representations of Adam and Eve with a tree in the Garden of Eden. Tiburcio reproduces an early example here.