Jorge Camacho

Born in Havana in 1934, the painter Jorge Camacho was initially on course to study law in 1950. He first started to become acquainted with Surrealism through the poetry of Breton and Eluard, then via the abstract work of Klee and Miro. Two years later, he took up painting himself.

His works immediately convey to us his love of travelling. The first of his trips, to Mexico, introduced him to Pre-Columbian culture. This provided the inspiration for his first solo exhibition, which was held at the Galerie Cubana on his return. His interests in philosophy, traditional rituals, botany and zoology were further consolidated during his visit to the United States, where he was exposed to Native American culture for the first time. In 1959, he moved to Paris, where he held various solo exhibitions and participated in joint exhibitions alongside the Surrealists he had got into the habit of reading in Cuba. In the 1970s, he travelled to Guyana, Mauritania and Venezuela for the purposes of carrying out ornithological research.

During these trips, he focussed primarily on photography as a means of transcribing, in an objective manner, his feelings and impressions when faced with nature. His paintings are considerably more subjective: lyrical, Fauvist and primitive in approach and style, they deal with themes of shamanism. Images of faces, depicted in all the various warm tones his works exhibit, blend and merge into the landscape, creating an impression of mystery… of transcendence.

Jorge Camacho died in Paris on the 30 March 2011.