posted on 15 May 2016

Why had I never heard of Francisco Amighetti?

I would consider that I have a more than average interest in all kinds of art – especially mid-twentieth century painting – but until I stumbled on this book, I’d never come across the work of Francisco Amighetti.  I’m quite prepared to accept that this might just be an unforgivable hole in my flimsy knowledge but if that’s the case it’s a shortcoming shared with just about everyone I know.

 

 

I suspect that what really lies behind my ignorance is the fact that Amighetti  was Costa Rican and, despite plenty of opportunities to do so, refused to leave his native country in search of wider recognition. It seems that his failure to court fame in the U.S. or Europe by moving there has meant that a lot of us have effectively been blind to this astonishing talent.

Born in 1907 in Costa Rica to parents of Italian extraction, Amighetti is generally acknowledged within that country as its greatest ever artist. His early artistic efforts were influenced by quite traditional representative forms of the day ( and I really like them) but his reputation really hinges on his adoption of various Modernist influences in the 1930s – in particular, Surrealism.

He also experimented increasingly with alternatives to traditional painting and his use of various printing techniques became more and more dominant – his woodblock prints are amongst the very finest work in that medium.

Amighetti was also a poet of some repute in his own country and published his first collection in 1936. In exhibitions of his art, which were becoming more commonplace by the time of the outbreak of war across the Americas and Europe, he would often combine his poetry with his paintings for a richer experience.

He remained active and working right up to his death in 1998 at the age of 91 when he left behind a legacy of over 700 pieces of work.

These bare facts of Amighetti’s life do little to convey the breadth and subtlety of his art. Although I haven’t been able to find anything much about his political affiliations, it seems clear to me that he is an artist with a pretty intense sense of social justice and whose work is political in the broadest sense of that term.

For me, he is an artist whose work deserves to be better know and more widely appreciated. I feel  this is something I could easily have missed out on had I not stumbled on this dual language publication actually produced in Costa Rica. I have been unable to locate anything in the UK that is currently in print and a quick search of the second hand market shows that copies of the book illustrated here can be found in the USA but prices are pretty astronomic. It’s time a publisher here in the UK took notice of this gap in the market and produced a new edition worthy of this great artist.

Terry Potter

May 2016