Jorge Camacho Lazo

JORGE CAMACHO LAZO (Havana, 1934 – Paris, 2011).
“Ashes 7,” 1974.
Lithograph, print no. 15/75.
Signed and numbered in pencil.
Measurements: 75 x 55 cm; 77 x 57 cm (frame).
One of the leading figures of Latin American Surrealism, who had been living in Doñana since the early 1970s, Jorge Camacho was influenced by the many avant-garde movements of his youth, particularly the work of Tamayo, Miró, Bacon, Tanguy, and, especially, Wifredo Lam. On a trip to Paris in 1959, he was invited by André Breton to participate in the activities of the Surrealist group, and upon his return to Cuba, he exhibited his new works at the Salón de Mayo (1967). He developed a style of painting based on the masterful treatment of line and color, drawing on elements deeply rooted in his unconscious, drawn from a blend of American traditions and cultures whose rituals and distinctive features are evident in the mysterious metamorphosis of his figures and in the use of unusual skeletal configurations and structures with a marked totemic character. His work is currently represented at MoMA in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, and the Reina Sofía in Madrid, among many others.