Maximino Renteria de la Cruz is a Wixárika (Huichol) yarn painter whose works are recorded as made in Nayarit, Mexico. Press coverage of the Bienal de Arte Huichol gives his community as Mesa del Nayar. Indigo Arts Gallery in Philadelphia, which lists his works as yarn pressed into beeswax on plywood, describes him as the compadre of the yarn painter José Benítez Sánchez. Peyote People, a gallery that sells his work, says he began his career working under Benítez for four years and then started making his own work with his wife, Yolanda, whom he married in 1993.
On the back of The Word of the Gods, a painting of about 1990, is a text that Indigo Arts gives in translation: “In this painting we can see the symbol when the Gods have communication during the night.” Four yarn paintings of about 1995 that the Penn Museum in Philadelphia bought in 1997 are cataloged under the name Maximino de la Cruz.
From October to November 2005 Indigo Arts showed his work alongside Benítez's in Visions to Heal the World. He received an honorable mention at the second Bienal de Arte Huichol, which opened at the Presidente InterContinental hotel in Mexico City in November 2020. In October and November 2022 he was among the artists in the third, at the same hotel. In June 2023 his work was in Entre el mito y la costumbre, an exhibition of Wixárika art at the Mexican embassy in Berlin. In July 2024 his work was in the fourth Bienal, at the Los Pinos cultural complex in Mexico City. In March 2026 the Penn Museum put one of its four on view in the student-curated exhibition Between Worlds/Entre Mundos: Visions of the Wixaritari.
Market: 3 lots at auction
