Santos Balmori Picazo

Santos Balmori Picazo (born September 26, 1899 in Mexico City , † March 5, 1992 ibid) was a Mexican painter and stage painter.

biography

Santos Balmori spent his childhood and youth in Spain, Chile and Argentina. His mother, the Mexican Everanda Picazo de Cuevas, died very early. When he was five years old, his father Ramon Balmori Galguerra moved with him to his home in Llanes , Spain . After his father committed suicide, he decided at age 15 to take his life into his own hands, and studied in Santiago de Chile at the local art school, the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Santiago, located in the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago of Faculty of Arts of the Universidad de Chile is located.

Years in Europe

In 1919 he continued his studies as a scholarship holder at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, where he studied together with Salvador Dalí , Remedios Varo and others under Joaquín Sorolla , José Moreno Carbonero and Julio Romero de Torres . He received another scholarship from the Spanish government to study in Rome, where the Mexican art academy did not accept him.

So he went unofficially to Paris , where he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Antoine Bourdelle . Here he met Tsuguharu Foujita , Aristide Maillol , Giovanni Giacometti , Juan Gris and Maurice de Vlaminck and was influenced by the style of contemporary European artists. He lived and worked in Paris for 14 years and also met Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi , whom he also portrayed. He worked with Henri Barbusse and illustrated articles for Le Monde newspaper , including articles by Miguel de Unamuno , Maxim Gorki , Rabindranath Tagore, Albert Einstein and Upton Sinclair . Balmori married the French ballerina Thérèse Bernard, who fell ill with tuberculosis a few years later and died. His second wife, Isabel Bjornstrom, was also a ballerina. With her he had a daughter named Kore. Balmori converted to Hinduism and, for health reasons and a thirst for adventure, went first to Mallorca and then to Oran , North Africa , from where he repeatedly traveled to Paris and Madrid. At the time of the Spanish Civil War , he teamed up with other anti-fascist artists, including Federico García Lorca , Miguel de Unamuno and León Felipe .

Return to Mexico City

During the reign of Lázaro Cárdena in the 1930s, he moved back to his hometown and founded the “Niños de Morelia” school for orphaned children from the civil war. In Mexico City he taught as a professor at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda” and at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, which emerged from the Academia de San Carlos . After his daughter Kore showed signs of polio, Isabel took her back to Sweden. Balmori then gave up the bond with his wife Isabel and joined the new dance movement in Mexico City in the 1950s. He married the dancer and choreographer Helena Jordan and became director of the Mexican Dance Academy, where he worked closely with Miguel Covarrubias and designed sets and costumes.

Balmori's pictures have been shown in numerous exhibitions and are now part of the collections of well-known museums. He has received several awards.

Web links

• Literature by and about Santos Balmori Picazo in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Santos Balmori Picazo, pintor astur-mexicano (Spanish), March 12, 1992.
2. ↑ Santos Balmori (1899–1992) (English), Noyola Anticuarios, 2007.
3. ↑ Featured Artists: Santos Balmori ( Memento of the original from May 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English), My Art Pieces.