Tunas, Circa 2000

Ruperto Salvatierra Lazarte  

Ruperto Salvatierra is regarded as one of the most important representatives of Cochabamba´s pictorial heritage. His inclination towards the arts was evident at the age of 2, when he started modeling small clay figurines. He started exhibiting his paintings at the age of 13 in the Cochabamba city hall gallery. He could not finish high school due to his family's economic constraints. Although he received some formal training, he considers himself a self-taught and self-educated artist.

By the early 1980s he was recognized nationwide as one of the most important "costumbrist" painters, as well as a highly demanded portraitist. In his palette and brush strokes one can clearly find the influence of the great impressionists, particularly Spanish impressionists such as Joaquin Sorolla and Alberto Pla y Rubio. Yet, his themes and landscapes follow on the steps of his Bolivian predecessors. Salvatierra has forged a singular style through which he has depicted the Bolivian society and the changes it has suffered throughout his lifetime; a society that has remained highly mystical and linked to a rural environment, filled with references to its native American cultural roots, while progressively changing into an urbanized condition.

Salvatierra has won all the major national awards, more than once, in three different specialties (painting, drawing, and watercolor). Al least two retrospective exhibitions of his work have been organized, and he has held more than 60 solo shows and countless collective exhibitions. Two books have also been published summarizing his work. His works are present in all major museum collections in Bolivia, and in private museums, and collections abroad. He is, without a doubt, one of the most influential Bolivian painters of the late 20th century, still active and thriving.