René Antezana

René Antezana Juárez (1953, Oruro - Bolivia) is a multifaceted artist who has developed his art mostly through poetry and painting. His parents were cinematographers, and he maintains that he was educated and trained more at a movie theater than at school. He won several awards for his poetry, later transferring his passion for poetry and cinema into painting. "I paint metaphors" says Antezana when referring to his work, emphasizing that his creations are diverse "because I am made of permanent searches."
René Antezana's works make us travel from his childhood memories, where the popular festivals and cultural diversity of Bolivia inhabit entangled with aspects of cinematography, art, and literature; to current concerns for the environment and the crisis of our civilization. His works are deeply emotional, closely related to his state of mind and the context he inhabits, as well as to essential themes (life, death, time, love, belonging) that pervade his poetry. Antezana resorts to the colors of his cultural heritage and to images of the surreal and contemporary. He aims for his paintings to provoke the viewer, nourishing his work with Andean and Amazonian symbology, presented in constant dialogue with universal art.