El Libro Ilustrado en Puerto Rico

Poster made for an exhibition in La Casa del Libro featuring illustrated books from Puerto Rico, which participated in the Second Biennal of San Juan of 1972. Lorenzo Homar (1913-2004), Puerto Rican printmaker, painter, muralist, draughtsman, calligrapher and athlete, pursued and developed the Puertorrican poster, and became part of an artistic generation that would employ art to create images that assert the Puertorrican spirit. In 1928, after emigrating with his family to New York, he studies in the Art Students League of New York, under the guidance of Canadian-American George Bridgeman, an accomplished draughtsman of the human figure. In the 1940s he attends nightly the Pratt Institute of New York, then the Brooklyn Museum Art School, where he studies with distinguished experimental artists like the Mexican Rufino Tamayo and the American William Baziote. In 1950 Homar returns to Puerto Rico, where together with Rafael Tufiño, José Torres Martino, Félix Rodríguez Báez and other artists, creates the Center for Puertorrican Art. A year later he stars working in the Community Education Division (DIVEDCO, for its Spanish acronym), assuming the direction of the graphic arts section in 1952. After leaving DIVEDCO, in 1957 he becomes director of the Graphic Arts Workshop of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. During his directorship of these workshops he taught many young artists, among them Antonio Martorell, Myrna Báez and José R. Alicea.