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Jorge A. Guzman Rodriguez

I was born on May 9, 1962 in a small town known today as Villa de Santo Tomás in San Salvador, Republic of El Salvador, Central America. My parents' names are Jorge A. Guzmán Sánchez and Alicia Rodriguez Alvarado. I am the second of 5 brothers.

My passion for drawing and painting as a child found its inspiration in the artwork of my grandfather, Antonio Guzmán Sánchez (Papá Toño), one of those bohemian, withdrawn and mystical characters that there are in families. He was a poet and a self-taught painter, whose talent and aptitude went unnoticed because of the lack of support to artists in the country during his time, a fact that did not discourage him from reaching the laurels of glory and self-accomplishment as an artist. In fact, he was the recipient of the literary award "Juegos Florales" and won local competitions in Ciudad Arce, a small town located in the Department of Libertad. I actually learned from a drawing method published by "Difusora Panamericana", a text that would eventually become my only memory and legacy of my grandfather to Little Kozka, like he used to call me; a method that introduced me to the world of drawing.

My aspiration as a youngster was to be a student of a painter who lived in my neighborhood, Colonia Santa Lucía. Right there, in his house, the painter ran an improvised academy, a place that I frequently prowled in search of an opportunity to admire through a window his works of art or what his students were learning.

My long-parted vocation for the plastic arts became once again alive when years later, in 1995, I met the master Armando Solís, the very same painter that in my youth I yearned to meet and attend his classes. My dream came through, as every weekend for a period of 2 years, I had the opportunity to learn from him and share my knowledge of the arts with this great master. He was my mentor, my friend, someone that I will always remember with respect and admiration. An icon of the Arts in El Salvador, a multifaceted artist very well known as a sculptor, engraver, writer, archaeologist and publisher of various books, an outstanding figure and one of the representatives of Neo Impressionism.

My acquaintance with that master allowed me learn the theory of color, light and shadow, the paintbrush technique, watercolor and oil, as well as exchange ideas and points of view with other artists. Hence my admiration for the art done with palette knives and a range of color reflected in the works of Carlos Garay, one of the landscape exponents in Honduras, and Camilo Minero, another master of Salvadorian painting, both friends of Armando Solís, whom I knew through their work.

Among the various artistic movements and styles, my admiration is for Renaissance, Baroque, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Surrealism and Neo-Impressionism. Some of my most admired Latin American artists are Pedro de Matheu, José Mejia Vides, Camilo Minero, Armando Solís, Carlos Garay, and the muralists Diego Rivera and Orozco of Mexico.

I had my first group exhibit in 1998 in El Salvador, were I showed a work called Mininos.

Between 1999 and May 8, 2000, I produced more than 75 works in still life, landscapes and portraits, which today form part of private collections of friends and relatives in El Salvador.

On May 9, 2000 I moved to New York, the city that I adopted as my permanent residence. In October of the same year, a relative of mine invited me to participate in the meetings of an incipient organization, where I had the opportunity to meet two enthusiastic artists, Daniel Flores y Ascencio and Gonzalo Guevara. These two artists promoted Inalcuz as an alternative and a way to satisfy the need to disseminate Latin American art in Long Island.

These dreamy, bohemian and multifaceted artists — one of them a filmmaker and writer, the other a painter, sculptor and writer — became essential pieces in my life as an artist. Their friendship, my long gatherings with them, our exchange of ideas and projects contributed to the definition of my own objectives and work plans in my constant search for “Me, the Artist “.

Thanks to the help of my friend Gonzalo, I was introduced to the artistic world in the area and able to participate in a group exhibition organized by the Church of Saint Paul in Brooklyn, where I showed a work entitled “Por qué la Diferencia”. (Title in English: “Why the Difference”.)

The need to find myself as “Me, the Artist” put me on the path of a never-ending search for something different, something that reflects my own character and defines me as an artist. That challenge led me to experiment with texture, palette knives, mixed techniques with paintbrush and palette knives, color in its pure state, backgrounds and materials.

My exchange of ideas with my good friend Gonzalo and his constructive criticism motivated me to experiment even further and find an echo in abstractionism, mainly in abstract expressionism and the subject matter.

I was later on invited to participate in a group exhibit organized by the African American Museum in Hempstead, where I showed three paintings and a sculpture in wood.

Restless of ideas and motivated by the adversities of life, the economic and social context surrounding me, the frustrations of friends/artists that I was supporting, and the search for alternatives to overcome the miserable indifference of an asleep community to culture and the arts, I launched a pilot program focused on offering opportunities to beginning artists. With that thought in mind, I presented my first individual exhibit via the Internet in the site www.ikarusgallery.com, which compiles my work of 5 years and is called "A Synopsis of My Evolution and Dreams".

MY ANOTHER FACE jguz29.blogspot.com