Marcelo Suaznabar

Marcelo is a self-taught visual artist, born in 1970 in Oruro, Bolivia. He had a passion for drawing from an early age, motivated by his uncle Enrique Suaznabar, a professional photographer. Focusing solely on drawings as the main source of his creations, he showed a great interest in art and began using watercolours, pastels, and coloured pencils. Marcelo developed a substantial amount of his work in his city. In 1992, Marcelo went to Chile to attend and completed a course at the Art School of the Extension Center at the Catholic University. In December 2001 he moved to Canada with his wife. He continued to progress using surreal and symbolic language, an aesthetic language covering all of his work. He sets his imagination free, exploring and examining universal themes that preoccupy human beings, the passing of time, beauty, nature, fear, temptations, and death.

Artist Statement:

My paintings follow the tradition of allegory and didacticism of artists like Hieronymus Bosch. I also engage elements from the surrealist tradition, although my images are not automatist. They have more in common with surrealism, as access to the subconscious or dream-like world. I grew up in the city of Oruro, on the Altiplano region of Southern Bolivia, which is desert-like, but paradoxically retains a sense of the magical. My father had a farm there, and I have developed an instinctive affinity with animals and the landscape. Some of my paintings make use of desolate settings that go back to this region. I combine animals with humans in hybrid forms. I try to seek answers and to contemplate them. I need to express thoughts and visions, and to visually express with the language of colour. In my figures, there is the symbolism of nature, the progress of time, life, death, the universe, and the confusion of the human mind itself. My conscious intentions are a comment on the environmental catastrophe that becomes increasingly unavoidable, due to the structure of human society, with all its greed and temptation for the soul. My imagination takes me to mysterious places. Art allows me to share those realities. I seek to draw the unconscious into consciousness through surreal images and symbolism, to offer access to the subconscious.