As it is the case with the music of El Salvador, little is known in the U.S. about the visual and graphic arts of this small Central American country. The lack of funding for culture, the lack of adequate local art institutions, and poverty have contributed to the little exposure given abroad to Salvadoran art. In this regard, the recently opened exhibition, Two Visions of El Salvador, at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC, is a welcome recognition of the cultural traditions of this fascinating country.
The history of El Salvador has been characterized by poverty and social injustice, dictatorships, political repression, and civil wars. This history, along with the development of an oligarchy of coffee growers —EL Salvador's famous 14 families— has deeply influenced El Salvador’s cultural developments. In the 19th Century, artists supported by this oligarchy looked to Europe for cultural direction, favoring traditional portraits, religious images, and genre paintings. The institutional beginning of Salvadoran art was marked by the return from Europe, in the early 20th century, of important Salvadoran artists such as Pedro Ángel Espinoza (1899-1939), Miguel Ortiz Villacorta (1887-1963), and Carlos Alberto Imery (1879-1949). Imery, who studied art at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Rome on a government scholarship, returned to El Salvador to establish the country’s first art academy, the Escuela Nacional de Dibujo y Pintura, later renamed Escuela Nacional de Artes Gráficas. Espinoza became a chronicler of the country’s native people and countryside. Ortiz Villacorta was influenced by Impressionism, specifically Mexican Impressionism, and distinguished himself for his portraits and luminous realistic landscapes. Many of Imery’s students showed a preference for indigenous themes and a desire to express a sense of national identity through art. Among Imery’s alumni are Luis Alfredo Cáceres (1908-52), known for his paintings of Salvadoran mestizo types; and José Mejía Vides (1903-93), who studied in México and became a promoter of plein-air landscape painting in his country. Other graduates of Imery’s school who went on to study in México were Mario Escobar (1915-82), Camilo Minero (1917), and Luis Ángel Salinas.The 1930s were violent years in El Salvador, primarily remembered by the peasant uprising of 1932, a peasant-led rebellion to protest the abuses of the political class and the policies of the latifundia. The military responded by executing the leaders and killing thirty thousand people in a massacre that came to be known as La Matanza (The Slaughter). Despite this violence in the countryside, the art produced during this period did not reflect social upheaval; instead it has a marked nationalist theme and shows the influence of Mexican styles.
In 1935, the country’s second major art school was founded by Spanish painter Valero Lecha (1894-1976). For the next four decades Lecha was responsible for training many artists who would shape Salvadoran art. Also during these years the institution Amigos del Arte was founded by writer Salvador Salazar Arrue (Salarrué, 1899-1975) who independently became an active painter. Salarrué created a style combining black outlines, intense colors, and vernacular subjects with fantasy and a sense of mystery. Still, cultural isolation reigned and Salvadoran artists did not introduce modernist trends until the late 1940s. In 1947 a group of Imery’s students formed the Grupo de Pintores Independientes, an association committed to combining social causes with new aesthetic ideas. Their approach came into confrontation with the academic tradition followed at the time by Valero Lecha’s students, who called themselves the académicos. However, many of these students continued their studies abroad and returned to El Salvador to introduce new trends in the 1950s. Among these were the socially conscious Julia Díaz, Noé Canjura and Elías Reyes. Another outstanding woman painter from the Lecha school is Rosa Mena Valenzuela, who is well known for her Expressionist figures and her unique calligraphic strokes. During the 1960s, Salvadoran painters sought an encounter with the international avant-garde. The Spanish-trained Carlos Cañas explored many styles as an artist and teacher, and became an important figure in the move toward contemporary trends. The greatest promoter of modern art was Julia Díaz, who founded Galería Forma in 1958 as the country’s first permanent exhibition space, which later became the Museo Forma, the only museum of 20th Century painting and sculpture in El Salvador. Other modern versatile painters are writer Armando Solis and Benjamín Cañas, who is described as the most important painter of the fantastic in Latin America, with a style that includes abstractions, mixed media, distorted perspective, and classical technique.In the 1970s, the poverty, landlessness, class divisions, military regimes, and political repression reached a peak, starting a period of civil unrest and later a violent civil war that lasted more than a decade. During this time thousands of Salvadorans, including many artists, fled the country.
Along with the academically trained, many contemporary Salvadoran artists have found their source of inspiration in El Salvador’s landscape, traditions, and society. This is the case with naïve painters José Nery Alfaro (1951) and Fernando Llort (1949), known as the founder of a popular arts workshop in La Palma, where artisans reproduce his folkloric designs. El Salvador finally began negotiations for peace in the early 1990s. In spite of the country’s devastating experience, young Salvadoran artists have continued to develop new visions that incorporate the unique Salvadoran experience and universal art themes.