Artists

Botero
Born in 1932 in Medellin, Colombia, Botero became interested in painting at an early age. His artistic precocity was evident in an illustrated article he contributed to the Medellin newspaper El Colombiano when he was seventeen. Titled Picasso and the Nonconformity of Art it revealed his avant-garde thinking about modern art. Botero moved to Bogotá in 1951 and held his first one-man exhibition there at the Leo Matiz Gallery. The following year, at the age of twenty, he was awarded a Second Prize at the National Salon in Bogota.

In 1948, he started work as an illustrator. In 1950, he went to Europe, where he attended the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, copied Velázquez and Goya in the Prado and admired the frescoes in Florence. He went on a long visit to Mexico in 1956-57 and the experience of Muralism significantly influenced his future direction. In his own work, he introduced inflated forms, puffing up to an exaggerated size human figures, natural features, and objects of all kinds, celebrating the life within them while mocking their role in the world. He combined the regional with the universal, constantly referring to his native Colombia and also creating elaborate parodies of works of art from the past - whether Dürer, Bonnard, Velázquez or David. Not without humour, the symbols of power and authority everywhere - presidents, soldiers and churchmen - are targeted in his attacks on a society still infantile in its behaviour."

It is not the semblance of volume, however, but volume itself, a tangible volume, that the medium of sculpture offers. His vision involves the conviction that monumentality is not so much a question of size as it is of proportion. It is a search for the heroic in art, an attribute that Botero first discovered as a student in Florence. Today Fernando Botero divides his time between Paris, New York and Tuscany. His paintings, sculptures, and drawings are exhibited and represented in museum collections throughout the world.

Frida Kahlo:

Frida Kalho
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter who was born on July 6, 1907 and died on July 13, 1954. Frida claimed to be born in 1910, the year of the outbreak of the Mexican revolution, because she wanted her life to have begun at the same time as the new Mexico.This anecdote provides a telling illustration of a unique personality, characterized since her childhood by a deep sense of independence and rebellion against mediocre social and moral habits, moved by passion and sensuality, proud of her "mexicanidad" and cultural tradition set against the reigning Americanization: all mixed with a very individual sense of humour.

Alejandro Obregon:

Obregon
Obregón was born in Barcelona, Spain, the son of a Colombian father and a Catalan mother. Most of his childhood was spent in Barranquilla, Colombia and Liverpool, England. In 1939, he studied fine arts in Boston for a year and then returned to Barcelona to serve as Vice Consul of Colombia for four years. In 1948, Obregón was named Director of the School of Fine Arts in Santafé de Bogotá where he was influenced in the frescostyle by Masters Pedro Nel Gómez and Santiago Martinez Delgado. His career as director lasted barely a year, but the seeds of change that he planted took rapid root. The following year, he moved to Paris, France and exhibited work throughout France, Germany and Switzerland. He then went to Alba, near Avignon in France, where he remained until 1955. A painting from that year, Still Life in Yellow, shows that his personal style was then fully developed, and exhibits the formal elements that came to characterize his work. In 1962 he wins the Salón de Artistas Colombianos, price that launched him as one of the greatest Colombian artists of the XX century.

Obregón, Enrique Grau, Fernando Botero, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar and Édgar Negret, came to be known as the "Big Five" of Colombian art

Gustavo Acosta:

Gustavo Acosta is obsessed by the power of architecture, both it's external grandeur and the darker histories it may conceal. In an Acosta painting, what at first glance looks like a nostalgic urban vista, on closer inspection reveals buildings of fortress walls and catacomb interiors. As impressive as his cities appear, they are empty of people, desolate and unlivable. Acosta's grand but empty buildings suggest the false promises of history, that all that remains of revolutions and empires are their architectural facades.

Acosta's paintings have the uncanny power to evoke the psychological condition of exile. We have all had the experience of returning to a place from our past, only to discover that even if the place still physically exists, it remains illusory, little more than a backdrop to our memories of another time. This quality of temporal displacement, of past and present coexisting, is central to Acosta's art, and is perhaps his greatest achievement.

Skeptical of ideology, political or aesthetic, Acosta's paintings combine historically disassociated areas of artistic expression: three-dimensional space, theatre, and Modernism's emphasis on the two-dimensional surface. For Acosta, the notion of aesthetic purity is just another form of imprisonment. He pursues his artistic vision with supreme indifference to fashion. His beautifully crafted paintings, with their majestic, cloud-laden skies, reflect Acosta's conviction that art is a sublime realm, an essential antidote to the intellectual fervor of the moment and the bankrupt ideologies of the past.

Gunther Gerzso:

Gerzso
By the late 1940's, Gunther Gerzso's geometric abstractions combined the restricted space of Cubism with the deep vistas of late Surrealism. His style is characterized by rich, jewel-like glazes of color, sharp-edged architectural forms, and the suggestion of a subterranean space, at once erotic and psychological. In addition to Cubism and Surrealism, his paintings have references to pre-Columbian art and the varied landscapes of Mexico. He is Mexico's most significant twentieth century Abstractionist.

Wifredo Lam:

Lam
Wifredo Lam is a major figurative artist, responsible for introducing the expressive force of Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions into modern painting. Lam's fascination with voodoo, trance states, and the rituals of spiritual transformation, adds a new poetic dimension to the iconography of Surrealism

Jesus Lugo:

Lugo
The paintings of Jesus Lugo reflect his passion for the intersection of art and history. Lugo's recent series of paintings have addressed the utopian vision of Tatlin and the Russian revolution, Manet and the Napoleonic culture of war, Jackson Pollack and the triumph of American painting, and Francisco Toledo and the challenges of globalization.

One need not be a student of history to appreciate the power of Lugo's paintings. His romanticism, irreverence, and formal invention are immediately apparent. Lugo has adapted the historical landscape to his own purposes, adding as a recurring device an imaginary scaffolding, part Piranesi, and part Rube Goldberg. This scaffolding, delightful in itself, suggests that painting is a constructed reality, a game of delicate balances, precarious, in danger of collapsing in the blink of an eye. In keeping with his voluminous subject matter, Lugo's influences encompass everything from Nineteenth and Twentieth Century European painting to Japanese art, from comic books and cartoons to the eroticism of contemporary advertising culture.

In 2002, Lugo was awarded first prize in Mexico's prestigious Rufino Tamayo Biennal. In addition to exhibiting at Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, his recent exhibitions include The Museum of Modern Art, Mexico, and ARCO, Madrid.

Roberto Matta:

Matta
Roberto Matta played a central role in the evolution of both European Surrealism and American Abstract Expressionism. Working in a fluid, improvisational style, he created a body of work which erases the distinction between inner and outer space. In addition to his more abstract psychological morphologies, he created figurative work which expresses his concern for the dangers of technology and social oppression.

Carlos Merida:

Merdia
Carlos Merida is one of Latin America's pioneer Modernists. Merida studied painting in Paris between 1908 and 1914, where he met Picasso, Modigliani, and others of the Paris school. He initiated the first pro-Indian art movement in the Americas, seven years before the rise of Mexican Muralism. Although Merida assisted Diego Rivera on his first murals, his true artistic direction is more closely identified with Rufino Tamayo. Like Tamayo, Merida rejected large-scale narrative painting, in favor of the more intimate charms of easel painting. Both artists shared a desire to fuse European Modernism with forms and subjects specific to the Americas. Merida's painting has three major stylistic shifts: a figurative period from 1907 to 1926, a Surrealist phase from the late 1920's until the mid 1940's, and a geometric period from 1950 until his death in 1984.

Diego Rivera:

Rivera
Diego Rivera worked in Europe from 1907 until his return to Mexico in 1921. It was upon his return to post-revolutionary Mexico that Rivera began painting the magnificent murals upon which his reputation largely rests. A superb draftsman, Rivera was capable of portraying the common people: Indians, market vendors, and laborers, with great dignity and a monumental sense of proportion.

Enrique Grau:

Grau
Was a Colombian artist, renowned for his depictions of Amerindian and Afro Colombian figures. He was a member of the triumvirate of key Colombian artists of the 20th century which included Fernando Botero and Alejandro Obregón. Grau was born in Panama City, Panama, and raised in Cartagena, Colombia. A self-made artist he was influenced by the Colombian Masters Ignacio Gomez Jaramillo, Santiago Martinez Delgado and Pedro Nel Gómez, he studied at the Art Students League in New York, USA, in the early 1940s. He later toured Italy, where he learned etching and fresco techniques before moving to the city of Cartagena. He won the Salón de Artistas Colombianos in 1957 launching a well noted career in the arts. His associations of white, black and indigenous figures and objects such as masks, eggs, fruit or cages brought him international fame, with exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and the Paris Museum of Modern Art. Grau donated 1,300 works of art (including some by other artists) to the city of Cartagena; these will be used to establish a museum, due to open in late 2004. Enrique Grau died in Bogotá, Colombia, at the age of 83.

Arnaldo Roche:

Roche
Arnaldo Roche is an important artist to emerge from the Caribbean since Wifredo Lam came to prominence in the 1940's. Like Lam, Roche explores issues of identity rooted in his mixed Spanish and Afro-Caribbean ancestry. Lam's formal lineage can be traced to Cubism and Surrealism, while Roche is a born Expressionist, closer to Van Gogh than to Picasso.

Roche is obsessed with memory, both its burial and retrieval, and this is echoed in his painterly technique; Roche often makes rubbings of his subjects' bodies, while laying them (or wrapping them) directly behind the surface of his canvas. He may also print ferns, lace, and other poetically charged objects onto his painting's surface. What follows is a complex process of covering up and scraping away pigment. Initial impressions are concealed, revealed, transformed, made at once distant and corporal realities.

Although Roche's work is always personal, there is a political subtext to much of his painting. His focus on the instability of self has a correlative in Roche's identity as a Puerto Rican: at once colonial subject and citizen of the world's most powerful country. Roche's paintings do not offer facile political solutions to the complexities of colonial identity. From his dual vantage point, Roche asserts that to be a colonial is to be in perpetual doubt and, in this sense, his is a geo-political form of Post-Modernism.

Arnaldo Roche's paintings can be found in the permanent collection of major institutions worldwide, including: The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Fundación Cultural de México, México D.F.; Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Francisco Toledo:

Toledo
Widely regarded as Mexico's greatest living artist, Francisco Toledo has a range of talents second to none. He is a master printmaker, draftsman, painter, sculptor, and ceramist. His art reflects a deep appreciation for the aesthetics of nature, particularly of animals not conventionally associated with beauty (bats, iguanas, toads, insects). Toledo's moral vision affirms that the world of human beings and the animal world are one with nature. He displays a highly developed sense of the fantastic, creating hybrid creatures, part human and part animal, both playful and monstrous.

Julio Valdez:

Valdez
Julio Valdez received his first museum exhibition at the age of nineteen. Among his many honors, he has received fellowships from the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, New York, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, where he was selected as artist in residence, 1997-98. Valdez's work evokes both his Afro-Caribbean roots, and his cosmopolitan life in New York City. His work references his childhood memories of the Caribbean, as well as contemporary issues of displacement and cultural identity. Whatever the subject matter, his work achieves a poetic dimension and remains process driven, consistently exploring the materials with which he creates.

Fernando de Szyszlo:

Szyszlo
Fernando de Szyszlo is one of the foremost artists to emerge from post-world war Latin America. Szyszlo's art hovers in the twilight between figuration and abstraction. His paintings evoke the still, monumental, power of Pre-Hispanic forms, while at the same time suggesting the dynamic, often violent, energies at their poetic and spiritual core. The darker energies of Szyszlo's art, are counterbalanced by his love of texture, color, and pattern. The tendency towards decoration is rooted in Szyszlo's appreciation of Pre-Hispanic textiles. Whatever the imagery of a particular painting, whether moving towards figuration or abstraction, or refusing to make the distinction, the drama under-pinning Szyszlo's painting is invariably centered in the tensions of physical and spiritual transformation, death and erotic ritual.

Szyszlo was born in Lima, Peru; his mother was Peruvian of Spanish-Indian descent, and his father a geographer from Poland. He lived in Paris and Florence from 1948 to 1955, and then returned to Peru. In 1962, he became a professor of art at Cornell University. In 1965 he became a visiting lecturer at Yale University. He first exhibited in 1947. His most recent museum exhibition was in 2005 at Palacio de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires. He currently resides in Lima.

Szyszlo has exhibited at many important venues worldwide, among them: the Venice Biennial; the Sao Paolo Biennial; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Art Institute, Chicago; and Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City.

Rufino Tamayo:

Tamayo
Rufino Tamayo was a great formal innovator, both as a colorist and as a master of the nuances of surface and texture. As a figurative artist, he created a unique synthesis of European Modernism and the ancient arts of Mexico. His themes include the transitory nature of civilization, and man's longing for the eternal

Manuel Alvarez Bravo:

A self-taught photographer, Manuel Alvarez Bravo purchased his first camera at age twenty while working at a government job. His earliest success at photography came around 1925, when he won first prize in a local photographic competition in Oaxaca. He returned to Mexico City, where he had been born, and in 1927 met Tina Modotti, who introduced him to a lively intellectual and cultural environment of other artists from various disciplines. Among them was Edward Weston, who encouraged Alvarez Bravo to continue photographing; Weston wrote to him in 1929: "Photography is fortunate in having someone with your viewpoint. It is not often I am stimulated to enthusiasm over a group of photographs."

Alvarez Bravo taught photography at the San Carlos Academy in the late 1930s, documented the work of Mexican mural painters including Diego Rivera, and contributed images to the journal Mexican Folkways . His primary subject interests have ranged from the nude form to folk art, particularly burial rituals and decorations.

Clovis Junior:

Clovis Junior

Clovis Junior, From Brazil, has succeeded while still young in conquering the spaces that so many other artists, who are also creative and talented, have only reached after a long journey, inspiration rhyming with perspiration.

This young artist from Paraiba State succeeds in transforming the simplest images into works of art, as if using magic spells, his lines and colours providing a translation of their simple beauty that seduces us all.

And there I go, setting off on paths that are not mine, penetrating into a land that I do not know, getting lost in the daring of wanting to explain the reasons behind success and creativity.

As I am neither an art critic nor an initiate of the specialized language that expresses and translates the itineraries of the creator and his work, I must limit myself to offering the opinion of the lover of artistic creativity, such as I am, and I proclaim this with vanity and pride, escaping from the compulsive temptation to be like the shoemaker of the legend and to stay with the sandals.

Daniel Burigo:

Daniel Burigo

1968 Born in Brasília, Brazil

I work basically with painting and drawing, many times with the combination of both. Flat 2D images are constructed in a random way, where I mix organic shapes and lines of uncomplete figurative realism, bringing up new forms and readings. I give great importance to ambiguity and uncertainty . I believe purity involves intuition and I try to hinder too much rationalism. Sometimes while painting or drawing I change the direction of my work exploring qualities related to its media, introducing elements brought in by memory, the use of symbolism and also allowing the material or feelings influence me conceptually.

Marianitta Luzzati:

Luzzati

Born in Brazil, Mariannita Luzzati lives and works in São Paulo and London, Piercing humanity, clarity and poise of the paintings that concern themselves with triumphs and frailties of humble, everyday lives.

Frequently using distant sites with anonimous people , luzzati has capture the rhythms and rituals of life, with the quiet intensity and lyricism.

Leonora Carrington:

Carrington

Carrington after having escaped in Lisbon, arranged passage out of Europe with a Mexican diplomat who was a friend of Picasso. In fact, she married the diplomat as part of the travel arrangements. Events from that period would inform her work perhaps forever. She lives and works in Mexico and New York.

"I didn't have time to be anyone's muse...I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist." --Leonora Carrington, 1983

In Mexico she later married Emericko Weisz and would have two children. The first son - Gabriel Weisz is an intellectual and a poet and the second son Pablo Weisz is a surrealist artist and a doctor.

Francisco Corzas :

Corzas

Corzas' imagery is of literary origin. Erudition rendered through virtuoso inarticulation. Cynosure yet restless, his imagery casts a benumbing yet a clarifying effect upon our perception. Ever-present is the hidden self portrait wherein saint and sinner are reconciled through the common virtue of passion. Corzas, one of Mexico's most prolific printmakers, attacked the challenges of the lithographic art with such euphoria as if it were life itself.

Omar Rayo:

Rayo

Omar Rayo (Born in 1928 in Roldanillo, Valle) is a Colombian caricaturist, painter and sculptor graduated from the Academia Zier de Buenos Aires and plastic artist.He won the 1970 Salón de Artistas Colombianos. Rayo also promoted the foundation of the Museum of Rayo. Rayo works with abstract geometry primarily using black, white and red colors.

José Luis Cuevas:

Cuevas

José Luis Cuevas (b. 1934) is a self-taught drawer, engraver and sculptor. He left the Escuela de Pintura, Grabado y Escultura "La Esmeralda" after a single course. During the 1950s Cuevas was very active in the "Rupture Generation- Generacion de Ruptura" that looked for a break from the Mexican mural painting school and its social content message. He has had individual shows in Washington, Paris, New York, Rome, Venice, Sao Paulo, Vienna, Madrid, Santiago. Cuevas has won many awards including the Drawing Prize at the V Biennial of Sao Paulo (1959), the National Prize of Science and Art of México - the highest distinction of the Mexican Government for scientists and artists (1981); he was admitted as a Gentleman of the Order of the Arts and Letters of the French government (1991). Cuevas has a unique style that clearly identifies his work. In 1997 he was honored with the Tomas Francisco Prieto Award in Engraving bestowed by Queen Sofia , Madrid, Spain. Cuevas writes a weekly column in Excelsior, one of the main México City newspapers. The José Luis Cuevas Museum in México City honors his contribution to art and displays contemporary art collection of the artist.

Pedro Figari:

Figari

Was a Uruguayan painter, lawyer, writer, and politician. Although he did not begin the practice until his later years, he is best known as an early modernist painter who emphasized capturing the every-day aspects of life in his work. In most of his pieces], he attempts to capture the essence of his home by painting the bourgeoisie’s local customs that he had observed in his childhood.

It is important to note that Figari painted primarily from memory, a technique that gives his work a far more personal feeling. With his unique style, which involved painting without the intention to create an illusion, he, along with other prominent Latin-American artists such as Diego Rivera and Tarsila do Amaral, sparked a revolution of identity in the art world of Latin America.

Fabian Perez:

Fabian Perez

Fabian Perez was born on November 2,1967 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As a teenager Fabian was fascinated with martial arts and fine arts. Therefore, he dedicated himself to study both disciplines. Karate helped influence his character giving him great discipline as well as opening him up to other forms of art, Much of what Fabian learned through his Eastern studies influenced his paintings.

Fabian left Argentina when he was 22 to live in Italy where he resided for seven years. It is here where his career in painting and writing took an ascendental journey. It is also in Italy where he was inspired to write his book "Reflections of a Dream", which was published later in the United States. He then went to Japan where he lived for one year. While there he painted The Japanese Flag and A Meditating Man which are on display in a government house. Fabian left Japan to come to Los Angeles where he devotes his life to inspire other with his paintings and writings.

Fabian's style is unique. He wishes not to categorize his work, he feels this limits the artist as well as the work. He likes to paint with acrylic because it dries quickly and this allows him to follow his impulses. The bold and symbolic imagery feels intensely passionate. Fabian paints with his emotions and each painting reflects his drive and energy. The paintings become a roadmap, a guide with many directions, where the viewers decide which path they wish to experience.

Caio Fonseca:

Fonseca

Caio Fonseca, American, born 1959, was raised in New York City. In 1978 he went to Barcelona where he studied and painted until 1983. He moved to Pietrasanta (Lucca) in 1985 where he worked until 1989. After two years in Paris, he returned to New York and now divides his time between Pietrasanta and his studio in Manhattan on East Fifth Street. His works are held in numerous public and private collections in Europe and the United States.

Mike Hernandez:

Hernandez

Puerto Rican, Considered a primitive post-modern artist, Miguel Hernández ‘s work cultivates this genre almost from the beginning of his career. He was greatly influenced through primitive Haitian art, especially in his first direct contacts with art through the work of the Spanish painter Angel Botello Barros, whose influence can be appreciated directly in visits to his workshop.

"I claim that my art is a scream of the Caribbean for all people; that abogue for its own identity

and it claims its space in the big community of the international art world"

Duran O

Duran O, A Group of latin American Artists Originaly from Colombia and Venezuela, Expositores de amplia trayectoria nacional e Internacional, con amplios conocimientos de educacion, estetica, artes plasticas, colecciones Privadas en pasies como Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador entre otros.

Virginia Hernandez:

Virginia Hernandez

Colombian artist living in France. Former galerist in her birthplace of Cali, she came in Paris in 2002 in order to continue an artistic course and then decided to live in the south of France following the ocean and the sun, a direct link with her Colombian tropic. Her artistic evolution leads her to discover her own style with the knife and oil, by the means of geometrical signs, describing a perpetual movement, and symbolizing the cycles of transformation of the human been over time. In her canvas full of little squares of different sizes, she represents daily situations, the emotions and memories of her country and her childhood. The little squares translate the running time, the instants that will never be the same. Very expressive, between the figurative and the abstract style, she shows the passion of colors. Her mission : Being an embassador of her country with her Art.

Alberto Quintero:

Quintero

Investigador de Arte, Docente y Artista plástico. Su fortaleza investigativa se ha plasmado en su obra de vasto recorrido en la dimensión de las raíces del realismo mágico latino-americano. Expositor de amplia trayectoria nacional e internacional, Con amplios conocimientos en educación estética, artes plásticas y con experiencia laboral en el exterior .. Colecciones Privadas : Colombia, Estados Unidos,Puerto Rico,Austria,Canada,francia,Japon,Rusia,Brazil,Argentina,Chile.

Diseno Grafico : Imágenes Corporativas y diseno de distintivos para diferentes companias

Sierra Raul Ortiz Jorge Felix