Puerto Rico: The Sum of its Arts

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In collaboration with

Instituto de Cultura PuertorriqueñaMuseo de Las AméricasMuseo de Arte de Puerto RicoMuseo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto RicoAteneo PuertorriqueñoMuseo de Arte de BayamónFlamboyan Arts Fund
and 3 more collections

Palette of a nation

Discover 1000s of artworks by color

The tour starts here

Get to grips with help from the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico

The father of it all

12 iconic works from the 18th century master

Museum origin stories

The turn of the century and the beginnings of Puerto Rico's great collections

How Impressionism came to Puerto Rico

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Top masterpieces to explore in detail

Pérez García’s technique of printmaking acts as a metaphor of the violence her subjects endure. The carved wood is obliterated into pigment to create the final image.

Marta Pérez García

The title of the piece confronts the viewer with a historical reality within the Americas in which many persons have disappeared and are presumed dead, their bodies never being recovered.

Marta Pérez García

The emphasis on the US flag within the work's composition, as part of the body of a being that seems to prey on the suffering, white-clad central figure, signals a certain adjudication of responsibility.

Marta Pérez García

The figure is enveloped by the immense wingspan of the sinister creature. Could this be a reference to Operation Condor, the US-backed campaign of political repression and state terror that also resulted in thousands of disappearances in the Southern Cone of South America?

Marta Pérez García

In this case, the disappeared refer to those lost at sea on the journey from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, in hopes of eventually making their way to the United States. Beginning in the 1960s, very prominently during the 1990s, and peaking in the year 2000, a great number of Dominican immigrants arrived in Puerto Rico for political, economic, and social reasons.

Marta Pérez García

'In Praise of the Disappeared' by Marta Pérez García

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Melvin Martínez (b. San Juan, Puerto Rico 1976) is a Puerto Rican painter deeply invested in the history and materiality of his medium, producing mixed media paintings, as well as sculptures and installations about painting itself.

Melvin Martínez

The painting is titled after a housing complex built in 1965 in the town of Carolina, Puerto Rico. Jardines de Country Club, or Country Club Gardens, was an extension of the urban development called Country Club that sold middle class upward mobility dreams.

Melvin Martínez

Martínez references the optics of Pointillism, the anarchy of Abstract Expressionism, the resplendence of Color Field painting and the embodied summons of gestural abstraction.

Melvin Martínez

Patches of glitter, stenciled decorative motifs, geometric shapes, lines and dripping spray paint complete the composition.

Melvin Martínez

Martínez's work engages with kitsch and pop via his use of materials and their applications. Some works might even seem decadent in their lushness.

Melvin Martínez

The surface of this large-scale canvas appears frosted, at once irresistible and grotesque. More than a formal exercise, Jardines de Country Club establishes a link between the aesthetics of the painting and the aspirations of mid-century middle class Puerto Ricans.

Melvin Martínez

'Jardines de Country Club' by Melvin Martínez

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