Juan O'Gorman (Santa Catarina, Coyoacan, Mexico City, Mexico, 6 July 1905 - Mexico City, Mexico, 18 January 1982) was a prominent Mexican painter and architect, and the brother of historian Edmundo O'Gorman. He was the son of Cecil Crawford O'Gorman—an Irish mining engineer and self-taught painter—and Encarnación O'Gorman Moreno.
At the age of twenty, he studied architecture at the National School of Architecture—located at the time on the second floor of the Academy of San Carlos—which is now the Faculty of Architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Additionally, he developed his skills as a painter outside the rigid confines of academicism, drawing inspiration from figures such as José María Velasco, Gerardo Murillo (Dr. Atl), Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera.
He became a distinguished architect under the influence of Le Corbusier and helped introduce functionalist architecture to Mexico. In a later phase of his career, the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright and his organic architecture became evident. Throughout his career, he taught at the National Polytechnic Institute, where he established the architectural engineering degree program.
As an architect, he worked on major projects such as the new Bank of Mexico building and designed and built twenty-six primary schools in Mexico City. In the early 1950s, he built his own home in the Jardines del Pedregal de San Ángel neighborhood—a true work of art that was, regrettably, later demolished by sculptor Helen Escobedo to make way for the Fermatta Music Academy. Also in the San Ángel area, O'Gorman designed and built the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo House-Studio Museum for the two artists between 1931 and 1932.
His most globally celebrated work—renowned for its creativity, construction technique, and sheer scale—consists of the four-thousand-square-meter murals covering the four facades of the Central Library building at UNAM's University City, created in collaboration with Gustavo Saavedra and Juan Martínez. These murals are mosaics created from millions of colored stones sourced from various locations across the country. The north side depicts the pre-Hispanic past; the south, the colonial era; the east wall, the contemporary world; and the west wall, the university and modern-day Mexico.
As a painter, he is noted for works in public spaces that captured historical episodes and various events in a distinctive style—such as the murals at the National Museum of History (Chapultepec Castle), at Mexico City International Airport (*The Conquest of the Air by Man*), and the mural *Credit Transforms Mexico*, which was recently relocated to the HSBC Tower. O'Gorman also produced easel paintings. He became a member of the Academy of Arts in 1971 and won the National Prize for Fine Arts in 1972.
