Pedro Alvarez's style of artwork is known worldwide as Neoazteca. Neoazteca is a mixture of modern art and the pre-Hispanic culture. Pedro creates his artwork by following the specific rules of the pre-Hispanic people of Mexico. The end product of his artwork joins the human spirit with the universe where they become one in harmony. Pedro's creations join different worlds of art, his paintings show the way bodies have been modified and tattooed since the beginning of man, and his tattoo work is collected from people all over the world. We asked Pedro a few questions about his style of work and his beliefs of the pre-Hispanic culture and this is what he had to say.
LRA: Tell us a little bit about your background?Pedro: I was born in the day Chicome-Mazatl (seven-deer), on the month Tlacaxipehualiztli of the year Mactlactlionce-Acatl (11-reed) (April 7, 1971) on a place of the Great Tenochtitlan, which was once covered by the waters of the Texcoco Lake. The patron deity of my birthday is the Tlaloc God of Rain and a couple of Chalchiuhtlicue Goddess of earth's waters. On the top of my head I have two symmetric hair swirls, which in the time of the Aztecs would've identified me as a sacrifice for the Rain God.
I am self-taught but I started doing my job when I was very young. I did my first tattoo when I was 12 years old and got my first one at this age as well. I never questioned myself on what I wanted to do when I grew up. I always knew that creating images was my mission in this life.
For many years, back in the day when tattooing was not a trendy thing (especially in Mexico City), I developed my art doing illustration, design, and backdrops for concerts and television, and kept tattooing in my house or at my friend's houses only as a hobby because back then there were no professional tattoo shops in Mexico City and tattooing was seen with a lot of prejudices by society. I had to go through the times when Mexican police used to stop you on the streets just because you had a tattoo, earring, or long hair. Tattoo artists were looked upon as felons, even when tattooing hadn't been officially forbidden by law in Mexico.
LRA: Where do you live now?Pedro: I've been back in Mexico City for two years now. I lived in Cancun for many years and some people think I was born there or even that I still live there. That is because when I lived there, every time I traveled for a convention to other cities of the Mexican Republic or to other countries, I always represented Cancun because I thought I was going to live there for the rest of my life, but the Rain God decided that I had to move and sent me two hurricanes in the same year (2005), which forced me to close my shop and go back to the city where I was born, the Great Tenochtitlan.
LRA: Where do you get your inspiration for your tattoos and artwork?Pedro: My main source of inspiration are the pre-Hispanic cultures of Mexico, better known as "Aztec," which is the one that flourished in the city where I was born. That's why I call my style Neoazteca. It is a reinterpretation of the Aztec art. But I take inspiration from other images of different ancient cultures of Mexico and from the other parts of the world as well, like India and Europe's iconography.
LRA: What motivated you to start creating tattoos?Pedro: Tattoos have always called my attention. I remember when I was around 9 or 10 years old, visiting some relatives who lived near the border of Baja California and seeing a lot of people with tattoos and it blew my mind. I thought that it was kind of a magical thing to be able to have drawings on your skin that will never go away.
LRA: What inspired you to create artwork?Pedro: Pre-Hispanic art has been my first inspiration to create, but besides that probably what inspired me to know about techniques and to develop my drawings was when I was a child there were those illustrations of the heavy-metal vinyl LPs I used to listen to in the '70s and '80s, which then led me to search for books of those illustration artists, like Frank Frazzeta, H. R. Giger, Roger Dean, Boris Vallejo, etc. At the same time I was lucky to have grown up with people close to me who introduced me to the work of other great masters, like the Mexican muralists Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco, and my favorite one Jorge Gonzalez Camarena. I grew up surrounded by their work since it's all over Mexico City.
LRA: What mediums do you work with?Pedro: I like to experiment with all the mediums I can put my hands on, but what I use the most to paint are the acrylic, watercolors and gouache, soft pastels, and colored pencils. I don't consider myself an airbrush artist but I use it a lot to give certain effects or finishings on my paintings, though I do almost everything with traditional brushes.
LRA: What is your favorite medium to work with?Pedro: Every medium gives you a different solution to achieve what you need to do. I like to do big formats of more than 1 meter with acrylics, I use watercolors and gouache for smaller and more detailed things, on the other hand the pastels gives you textures that are impossible to get with other mediums, and I prefer colored pencils to do tattoo Flash. But definitely the medium I spend the most time working with lately are the needles and ink on human skin.
LRA: Do you prefer doing color or black and gray tattoos?Pedro: Color tattoos of course. In the ancient Mexican cultures, colors are of major importance, the images of the gods without colors are just incomplete! Anyway, artistically talking, I also like black and gray tattoos and I do them when I'm required to.