Lorenzo Homar: Lyric and Satire (2005)

San Juan in the 1950’s was home to a group of young writers, musicians, painters, and modern choreographers who banded together in the friendship –and the tensions– that emerge from teamwork. Homar had brought with him the rich experience of the cultural and political debates of New York City, and the model of teachers and apprentices he had known in school and at work as a jewelry designer for Cartier. He brought the “studio” experience, in which art is a craft with rules and demands, with transmittable, teachable techniques […] In more than one way, we might say that Homar has been the most literary of Puerto Rican graphic artists. And he communicated that passion for the written word to his students. In a country with a very limited typographical and publishing tradition, Homar dedicated himself with a goldsmith’s passion to rewriting the quotations he had chosen and giving them an aura, fixing their beauty and value. […] Simultaneously, Homar broke the political rules with the virulence of his caricatures. As though in explosions, with a very expressionistic style that sometimes recalls the cruel images of Max Beckmann or George Grosz, Homar gave free rein to his satirical potential, which could be fearsome. […] There, in its satirical views of the Island’s leading political figures, one can see Homar’s carnivalesque vision of colonial politics. 

Díaz Quiñones, Arcadio “Lorenzo Homar: Lyric and Satire.” Homar: Homo, Humoris, translated by Andrew Hurley, Museo de Arte Dr. Pío López Martínez, 2005, pp. 29-36.

Imagen: caricatura del artista Lorenzo Homar. De la colección de Alma Concepción y Díaz-Quiñones.