(b Mérida, Yucatán, 1933; d Mexico City, 11 July 1987). Mexican painter and draughtsman. He studied architecture at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, at the same time taking private painting lessons from the Spanish painter Enrique Climent (1897–1980). Like the majority of artists of his generation, he made study trips to Europe and shared the general desire to practise a cosmopolitan art without nationalistic traits. His early works showed the impact of his architectural training and of the Cubism of Braque and Gris, but he later abandoned all traces of figuration in favour of an abstract style that focused attention on the process by which the painting was constructed. His prolific production, which consisted not only of paintings but also of collages and prints, showed a variety of influences during and after the 1960s, including Art informel, matter painting (especially from Catalonia), the austerity of Minimalism but above all the assemblages of Kurt Schwitters, within compositions clearly structured by orthogonals criss-crossed by diagonal elements and aggressive fissures. His brother Juan García Ponce (b 1932) was a noted writer and the leading critic of the so-called ‘generation of rupture’ artists in Mexico.