Frederico vigil biography definition

Above: Frederico Vigil in his home studio. Photograph courtesy of Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal/ZUMA Wire/Alamy Live News. 

PERCHED ON A SCAFFOLD that hugs the walls of an Albuquerque Convention Center stairwell, Frederico Vigil stands on his tiptoes.

Paintbrush at arm’s length, he sketches in yellow ocher the outline of a man carrying a wine barrel.

Frederico vigil biography definition

He pivots to dip his paintbrush in the bucket, ducking under the scaffold. He’s 73 (“plus tax,” he adds), but his “fresco yoga” helps keep him limber, he says. “Are you afraid of heights?” he calls.

“I am!”  

Acrophobia aside, Vigil has spent nearly four decades clambering up and down scaffolds as one of the few masters of buon fresco (true fresco) in the Southwest—painters who work, Michelangelo-style, on just-applied wet plaster.

His credits include North America’s largest concave