Considered a primitive post-modern artist,
Miguel Hernández ‘s work cultivates this genre almost
from the beginning of his career. He was greatly influenced through
primitive Haitian art, especially in his first direct contacts
with art through the work of the Spanish painter Angel Botello
Barros, whose influence can be appreciated directly in visits
to his workshop.
From his first exposure to plastic arts, he
instinctively begins his self-taught formation and then approached
the Puerto Rican painter Jorge Rechani (1981) in search of extending
his knowledge of oil painting. After two years under his guidance,
Miguel Hernández obtains pastel painting courses with
the painter Bart Mayol later to enroll with the Liga de Arte
de San Juan studying with the abstract painter Raul Zayas.
He
continues his self-taught formation until deciding to take Graphic
Arts, Photography and Publicity courses, which it leads him to
become a graphic artist for many of the advertising agencies
of San Juan. Eventually he is able to take several trips to the
Dominican Republic and Haiti where he studies and gathers influences
of the art and coloring of the painting from the Haitian teachers.
His art is obviously marked by the influence and experiences
of his native town of Santurce in Puerto Rico, where he gathers
all the folklore that characterizes his work and the big African
Antillean influence that is perceived in his art, giving him
a universal sense to his work that arises from the spontaneity
with which it develops personages and situations of his local
environment projecting them across the magic of the oil towards
a wider dimension, without it losing the simple-mindedness and
the Caribbean color that characterizes his work.
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