Born in 1907 in Cadereyta de Jimenez Nuevo León , Federico Cantú was a prodigious talent who as a youngster barely fourteen years of age, set off on an artistic path. He enrolled in Alfredo Ramos Martínezs newly established experimental school in Coyoacán, Mexico City in 1922. There, he absorbed his teachers impressionistic lessons. Not soon after, the young man found work as assistant to Diego Rivera newly arrived from years in Europe and about to unleash an extravagant mural project that changed the capital city and propelled the careers of numerous artists. 

Cantú lived the bohemian of Paris for a decade (1924-1934)

living in Paris Cantú moves to California to have his first big exhibition works like

Madonnas and Virgins become a constant theme in the work of Cantú. He had painted them since his days at Escuelaal Aire Libre de Coyoacán. However, this devotion to sacred art is seen to gradually increase in his work, so that in 1928 Cantú paints his first mural in Pasadena, where he includes the figure of the Cristo Negro, but also in the manner of votive paintings, in which he painted the Madonna, as well as the Descanso en la Huida a Egiptowhere the Virgin and Child are the central figures. The series of ink drawings in the Cantús Sketchbook already narrate the themes of this biblical labyrinth.

 There exists a duality in the young artist’s thoughts on women, which on the one hand constitute a symbol of fertility and eroticism

Federico Cantú said of his arrival in Paris in 1930: "on my return to Montparnasse, I found that my atelier had been rented and the works sold to the highest bidder. I must have lost