(b. Guatemala City, Guatemala, 1933).
This Guatemalan painter and printmaker studied briefly in Pasadena, California in 1953, and later in Mexico. From 1954 to 1957 he studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Guatemala City while researching folk art for the Dirección de Bellas Artes, but he was virtually self-taught and began as a draughtsman and painter of bullfighting scenes. In 1958 he traveled to New York on a Guatemalan government grant, prolonging his stay there with further grants, studying at the Arts Students League and Graphic Art Center and finally settling there permanently. He was influential in Guatemala until around 1960, but because of his long residence abroad his work did not fit easily in the context of Central American art. Before leaving Guatemala he painted landscapes and nudes in a naturalistic style, but he soon adopted a more modern idiom partly inspired by aboriginal Guatemalan subjects. After moving to New York, and especially f
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