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The brilliant colors and dazzling forms that characterize the tradition of Latin American art are still found in contemporary painting today. The talented artists collected here channel their zest for life, transforming it into energetic paintings that explore the individual world while celebrating the beautiful people and places that surround it. Agora Gallery’s Masters of the Imagination offers a rare chance to experience the nuances of fine art by Latin American artists, not merely with the eyes, but the heart.
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Francisco Agraz
 
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I have loved painting ever since I was a little boy, and my art has been deeply impacted by the study and admiration of great artists such as Picasso, Da Vinci, Saudek and Tolousse Lautrec, in which I have engaged since I was about ten years old, after being taken to see Orozco’s murals for the first time. In addition, the complexity of my work is increased by the Mexican influence of my father, who was also an artist. I try to bring all of these elements together to create something representative of universal harmony, expressed through dramatic angles, a balance of textures and forms, the management of shadows and the traces of romanticism that combine to produce a sensual as well as intellectual experience in my paintings.
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"Peregrination"
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"Yellow and Orange Landscape"
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Marcela Albitos
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Marcela Albitos channels color’s contemplative power. Her paintings are rhythmically composed, creating a peaceful visual space for viewers. Yet Albitos’ interpretation of peace is far from uneventful; the movement of her marks carries the eye through each composition, engaging an expressive dialogue between color, gesture and space. In Albitos’ work, mark-making becomes its own language. She uses this language, a private system of symbols, to articulate ineffable ideas about human life, translating her observations onto canvas. She envisions expanses of earthen hues, choruses of organic lines, surfaces full of diffuse, clouded pigment or planes interrupted by particles of light. Harmony is Albitos’ ultimate goal; she aims to bring the parts of her compositions together so that they become one sublime sensory experience.
Albitos studied business and communications at Universidad Anahuac in Mexico City before pursuing visual art. She has since exhibited her work in both solo and group shows. She lives and works in Mexico City.
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"Ritmo"
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"Composicion Mixta II"
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Giancarlo Bertini
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I discovered my love for painting at a very early age, and quickly decided that I wanted to be able to do what I love as a career. I never lost sight of this goal, and at 17 participated in my first exhibition. Perseverance has been one of the things that has characterized my art. In addition, I have found that an early admiration for Renaissance painting, combined with the art of Latin America and the influence of the USA which both surrounded me growing up, have resulted in a universalism in my work which I value highly.
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"Half Trail Half Orange"
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"The Origin"
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Rosane Demeterco Bussmann
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With my background as a Graphic Designer, I would describe my work as a visual poetry. Most of the pieces I work with have a spiritual meaning. Usually, at first I visualize the complete project in my mind, and then I draw it in my notebook and think about how I am going to materialize the idea. Finding the best technique to suit the idea is like completing a puzzle - there are so many things to consider.
In broad terms, I would say that the main concept in my artwork is designed to send a message of life to the spectator, who will be able to interpret it in accordance with his own experience of life. The messages are usually related to the feelings and dilemmas of life. I would love for people to reflect about life through my work; of course, in a positive way.
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"Harmony"
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"Lessons of Life III - Part I and Part II"
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Christine Drummond
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“The ultimate goal of art is JOY” (Gotthold E. Lessing) This quotation resonates with me very strongly, because “Joy” is exactly what I want to bring to people through my paintings... “Joy” through the choice of colors, the theme, the life and movement I bring to the canvas with each stroke of my palette knife. When I complete a painting, my strongest wish is that those who see it will be drawn into it and want to be part of the happy atmosphere. If people feel good when they look at one of my pieces, if my paintings brighten their day in any way, then my mission as an artist is completely fulfilled.
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"Moonlight Market"
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"Femmes en Mouvement"
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Sonia Ferrari
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In my life, Painting means passion, freedom, pleasure and sharing. Whenever I paint I try to follow my instincts and desires. I let myself flow so the best of me appears while listening to gospels, celtic music or, just nature – my music at home. Acrylic and oil on canvas are my allies. Following the expressionistic style, strong red, orange and yellow, deep violet and blue, with a touch of pure white convey inner feelings and mixed emotions such as the human struggle to find balance in this chaotic world; or the effect of our cultural legacies which inevitably choke us sometimes in our existence.
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"Mujer de Rojo"
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"Del Blanco al Negro"
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Ana María Garcés R.
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Chilean artist Ana María Garcés R. combines carefully rendered figuration with expressive, painterly marks. She creates serene atmospheres on canvas, using multiple media to capture the contrast between texture and delicacy. Her works thus convey contemplation and quietude as diverse and complex entities. Ethereal, transparent figures almost float on the surfaces of Garcés R.’s paintings, seemingly lost in their own internal dialogues. Text, waves of color or lightly rendered draperies create the introspective environment that the figures inhabit, while geometric shapes and subtle lines give the paintings a vague, architectural sense of place.
Garcés R. has been observing the figure and drawing from life for over a decade. Her art-making process organically emphasizes the importance of perceiving and reflecting on the world’s physical, emotional and cultural dimensions. Her paintings simultaneously convey the body’s natural beauty, its internal depth, and its role as a social communicant. Garcés R., who has a background in textile design as well as in fine art, lives and works in Lo Barnechea, Santiago, Chile.
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"Pareja"
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"Torso"
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Pedro Leon
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I’ve been influenced by several artists, techniques and styles, beginning with Renaissance paintings to the “ismos” of the 20th century. For my oil paintings, I follow the words of Ingres, “you paint as you draw.” The soul of an art piece is based on the drawing, but the color is the life of the piece. The simplicity of my work is becoming more obvious since I can express my art with fewer elements and extravagant color. On the other hand, I value the spontaneity and intuition of my abstract impressionism since I feel closer to the inner feeling than the mathematic reasoning.
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"Free Bull"
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Mayumi Luppi
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Brazilian painter Mayumi Luppi crafts abstract visions from raw material of monochromatic quadrangles. Using these forms as medium and canvas, she creates architectures that alternately comfort, confound and energize. Over and through these emotional shapes, Luppi threads and floats curved, spotted and sprawling forms. Some match individual artworks' titles, others interact playfully with their mosaic backdrops, tempering impressions of flatness with texture and depth. If Luppi's works initially evoke Piet Mondrian with carefully balanced grids and pates, Fernand Leger's paintings have more similar effects.
Luppi flirts with figuration and perspective, super-imposing and peeling her square planes at their edges, but never completely indulging our instinctual search for identifiable referents. Rather, she leads us over her flattened spaces towards refuges where abstraction seems to nearly give into representation. Sometimes these places are easy to find, in other works they are small and fleeting. In either situation, Luppi's explorations at the border of depth and flatness provoke searches that always engage the eye.
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"Distinction"
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"Wine"
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Javier Peña
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Mexican painter, Javier Peña, portrays abstract compositions of browns, whites, blues and deep reds whose dynamism springs from the strength of his brush strokes, a subtle sense of direction and layering. He acknowledges the inspiration of post-war abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Paul-Émile Borduas, but the impression of gazing at a collage of paints also echoes the stylistic traditions found in Dadaim. Rendered in varying strokes, Peña’s colors take on personalities generated through their tone and the style of their application.
Intense, revealing emotional portraits emerge from the meshing, overpowering and dueling of broad blues, resilient browns, erratic reds and hovering whites. Though titles often hint at his abstractions’ subjects, Peña adroitly visualizes psychic portraits of measured contemplation, perilous calm and total frenzy. The works emerge from personal experiences, but the stripped language of color and movement makes his emotional language universally legible. Widely recognizable yet nuanced and complex, Peña introduces us to our feelings by revealing his own.
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"Inminente Trasgresion"
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Maria Laura Pini
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Black pencils and other drawing elements engage in a graceful “pas de deux” and glide and float on a paper stage telling stories without words. A sudden and abrupt change follows to achieve accuracy through extremely precise cuttings, which will irreversibly give birth to my work of art. Creativity, freshness and an original way of telling, invite the spectator to watch.
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"Urban Rapunzel"
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"Miramar"
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Giovanny Sanchez Tot
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Columbian painter Giovanny Sanchez Tot’s frenzied, bustling canvases bring the imagery of street art into the gallery with a unique, vibrant vocabulary of forms and icons. Characters based on cartoon cats stare out at the viewer through thick, swirling swaths of neon paint that cut across the picture plane with a brash swagger. The resulting mixture of abstract expressionism, graffiti and pop art seems boundlessly energetic. Colors and figures leap from the canvas’s high-contrast palette and booming dynamics.
In some places Sanchez deploys an illustrator’s eye for composition, creating a balanced tableau of characters whose forms are defined by stark, bold lines. Elsewhere, his canvas explodes with dripping oil and acrylic shapes splashed across glowing chemical hues of aerosol spray paint. In these thickets of overlapping and competing energies, Sanchez’s cat figures become playful puns, clever reminders of the artist’s presence in a seemingly wild environment of chaotic visual pleasure. This balance between humor and vigor, continuity and innovation, makes his work simultaneously challenging and rewarding.
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"Paisaje 3"
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"Paisaje 5"
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Isabel Santta Cecilia
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My greatest artistic influence was the popular art of my native Brazil. I've always been attracted to art with a strong popular appeal, something accessible and understood by all. I had no academic background; I am self-taught and my only teacher was my personal experience. The result is that my creative process has developed naturally, slowly, reflecting my way of life, my concerns, my interests, but all naturally like a river flowing. I celebrate day by day with my brushes expressing my joy and happiness through bright vibrant colours. Each of us chooses the world we want to live in, and I paint my life with the colours I prefer. I don't paint what I see, because what I see is not here, but what may be seen.
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"Nózinho de Cortiça"
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"O Que é Isso?"
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Israel Vazquez
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My creative process starts with a daily intense capacity for a surprise. Surprise at everything that surrounds me, surprise at every detail that I find, surprise at emotional encounter. The second step is the confirmation of those emotions on canvas. With that, I accomplish reconfirming myself in each piece of my work. Then the circle closes with the feedback of the spectator when he sees himself inside those emotions on canvas and interacts with the energy of the work, feeling a part of it, communicating and converting his own encounters and becoming a part of the image.
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"Woman II"
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"Blue Calm"
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