Ernesto Ortiz Leyva was born in Fort Bliss army base in El Paso, Texas to Mexican immigrants from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He received his BFA in Painting and Drawing from the California College of the Arts in 2005. In 2003 he attended the École supérieure d'art et de design Marseille- Méditerranée, in Marseille, France. He received an MFA degree in Painting and Drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2014. In 2017, Ernesto was the first Artist in Residence at the International Print Center of New York, IPCNY. His work has recently been exhibited at the Editions/ Artist Book Fair and Art on Paper in Manhattan. His drawings, paintings, and etchings explore themes of sexual vulnerability, social conflict and political aggression, expressed in a unique variety of satiric, surreal and grotesque modes, drawn from a wide range of pictorial influences. He recently taught printmaking at City University of New York in Staten Island and he currently lives and works in Brooklyn.