José Chávez Morado (born January 4, 1909, Silao - died December 2, 2002, Guanajuato) was a Mexican painter and sculptor.
Morado was born in Silao, near the city of Guanajuato, where Diego Rivera was born, and like Rivera he is a well known and highly regarded painter and sculptor who became most famous for the murals he painted in Mexico in the first half of the 20th Century.
In 1925, young Morado took a train to the United States to find work. He worked odd jobs in Canada and all the way to Alaska. During a stay in Los Angeles he started studying drawing at the Chouinard School of Arts. He also met José Clemente Orozco at the Pomona College. In 1931, he was awarded a grant by the government of Guanajuato to study at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas under Francisco Díaz de León, Bulmaro Guzman and Emilio Amero. In 1935, he married a German exile living in Mexico by the name Olga Costa. In 1937, he joined the communist party and a year later he became a member of the Taller de Gráfica Popular with Lola Alvarez Bravo, Carlos Alvarado Lang, Isidoro Ocampo and María Izquierdo among others.
His first solo show was held in 1944 at the Galería de Arte Mexicano. In 1949, he traveled to Europe to study mosaics and a year later he returned to Mexico to build some of the most beautiful mosaic murals in the country. His most famous works can be seen at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the Quetzalcoatl mural at the Centro Medico Siglo XXI, the tower in the patio of the Museo Nacional de Antropologia e Historia and his own personal favorite, the murals at the Alhóndiga de Granaditas in Guanajuato.
He started working with sculpture in 1960 and created several monumental works in bronze. He was awarded the Premio Nacional de las Artes in 1974 and in 1985 an honorary degree from the UNAM.