Amero, Emilio

Emilio Amero was born in Ixtlahuaca, State of Mexico, in 1901, and died in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1976. In 1909, he moved with his family to Mexico City, where it is presumed he attended primary school alongside Rufino Tamayo. He studied at the Escuela al Aire Libre de Santa Anita Zacatlamanco and the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. He painted frescoes depicting six of the state shields of the Mexican Republic on the second floor of the second courtyard of the Secretaría de Educación Pública. He assisted José Clemente Orozco in the murals of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. He left Mexico in 1925 for Cuba, where he stayed for a year, then moved to New York, where he lived until the late 1930s. He returned to Mexico and stayed for almost three years before going back to New York and later to Seattle. In Mexico, he founded the lithography department at the School of Fine Arts, and among his students were Olga Costa and Chávez Morado. He returned to Mexico for the last time in 1939 and stayed until the end of 1940. He then went back to the United States and was invited to teach in Seattle for six years before settling permanently in Norman, Oklahoma.