Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:18:32 GMT - El Velorio de Francisco Oller 3368 Views |  Comments (0)
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Arts

There is a strong artistic presence among Puerto Ricans, whether from artists formally trained in art schools, or self-taught amateurs. 

Serious students of Puerto Rican art always go to the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in the Dominican Convent in Old San Juan. It's the best source of information on the island about Puerto Rican arts and crafts. 

With its dozen or so museums and even more art galleries, Old San Juan is the greatest repository of Puerto Rican arts and crafts. Galleries sell everything from pre-Columbian artifacts to paintings by relatively contemporary artists such as Angel Botello, who died in 1986. The Galería Botello, at 208 del Cristo St., was his former home. He restored the colonial mansion himself; now his paintings and sculptures are on display there. 

Another good place to see Puerto Rican art is the Museum of the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. Because of space limitations, the museums galleries can exhibit only a fifth of their vast collection at one time, but the work is always of top-notch quality. The collection ranges from pre-Columbian artifacts to works by today's major painters. 

The greatest art on the island is at the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Las Americas Avenue, in Puerto Rico's largest city. The collection, donated by former governor Luis A. Ferré, ranges from Jan van Eyck's Salvatore Mundi to Rossetti's confrontational Daugthers of King Lear. The museum building was designed by Edward Durell Stone, who also designed New York's Museum of Modern Art. Works are displayed here in a honeycomb of skylit hexagonal rooms. Puerto Rican artists who are represented include José Campeche (1751-1809) and Francisco Oller (1833-1917). In addition to such European masters as Rubens, van Dyck, and Murillo, the museum features works by Latin American artist, including some by the Mexican Diego Rivera. 

The first major Puerto Rican artist of note was José Campeche, an 18th-century "Sanjuanero" who lived his entire life in and drew inspiration from the city of his birth. The son of a freed slave and a immigrant from the Canary Islands; Campeche was greatly influenced by a Spanish court painter who was banished to San Juan. Since Campeche was fascinated by religious paintings, many of his 400 works were for churches. He was also a distinguished portrait painter, whose subjects ranged from governors of the colony to local personalities to members of well-to-do families. Some of his paintings are Birth of Christ, Vision of St. Francis of Assissi, Virgin of Mercy, Don Miguel Antonio de Ustariz, and many versions of the Virgin and Child. Many of Campeche's paintings are found in churches and in the Cathedral in old San Juan.