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Edgar Francisko Jimenez
Born in Pijiño, Colombia in 1951. He graduated in Fine Arts at the National University of Colombia, in Bogota. He studied color etching with the great etching Master, Stanley Hayter, at the "Atelier 17" in Paris and Lithography at the Arts and Crafts School of Barcelona, Spain. With these techniques he created a series of engravings on the subject of "Cumbia", a Colombian folk music and rhythmic dance which he kept also as a subject on his later acrylic on canvas works.
In mid 1982 he was appointed Drawing Professor at the Art Academy of Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogota, then in September 1983 he obtained a scholarship from the Colombo-Chinese Cultural Exchange, to pursue a postgraduate degree in Traditional Chinese Painting, at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, China. There, with the technique and the philosophy of Chinese painting and calligraphy, he created a very particular style, combining the strokes of Chinese calligraphy with the movements of Latin dances, giving his work a unique expression of eastern and western feelings.
After having finished his studies in Beijing, he established himself in Hong Kong, where he taught "Expression with Chinese ink" at the "Art Center", and was also appointed art professor at the French International School. During his twelve years sojourn in Asia, he had group and solo exhibitions in Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, China, Japan and Macau. In search of new horizons, in 1995 he moved to Canada where he developed a series of erotic paintings inspired by the erotic mysticism of Tantra, that were exhibited in Miami and Toronto.
Edgar Francisko is a founder member of the art group JIRART of Toronto, with this group he exhibited in North and South America, Africa and Europe.
Enrico Bucci, the Director of the Galería Bucci of Santiago de Chile, has called his style "fragmentation of the forms", and said: " Mountains, trees and human figures are painted in a way invented by himself. It looks at first sight to be a pointillist technique, but it is not. It is Edgar Francisko´s style, where the colors are applied in stains and dots so that when we see them they appear as if the figures were paralyzed or as if they had frozen the elusive instant of animation. Thus movement and immobility become a new pictorial invention".
On the First Volume of Colombian Art History book “The resources of imagination, Visual Arts of the Colombian Caribbean Coast”, the Art Critic Eduardo Marceles writes about his most recent work: “Back in Colombia, Edgar Francisko´s painting has turned towards the Barranquilla´s carnival vernacular figures. They are wonderful pictures where he includes Marimondas, Toritos, Garabatos, Congos, the ludicrous Zoo that invades the city during the carnival. With water color like technique, he gives his images the movement of the parades and the dances choreography, emphasizing the Caribbean light and their characteristic shining colors”
His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Hong Kong Cultural Center; the Colombian Consulates in New York, Miami and Hong Kong; the Embassies of Colombia and Venezuela in Beijing, China; the Berlin International School and the Embassy of Ecuador in Berlin, Germany; the Fenalco art collection in Bogota, Colombia; the Bolivariano Museum of Contemporary Art in Santa Martha, Colombia; the PROEXPORT Art Collection in Toronto, Canada; the Comfamiliar Institutional Museum, in Barranquilla, Colombia; the "World Trade Center Club" collection in Taipei, Taiwan; the Latin American Artists Collection, at the House of the Ecuadorian Culture Museum, in Quito, Ecuador; the Opera House Contemporary Art Collection in Cairo, Egypt; the Dominican Man Museum, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and in corporate and private collections in several countries.
Artist Statement
Without even dreaming to become an Artist, I started at age of six to model domestic animal figures with the clay that build up on rainy days, on the unpaved streets of Pijiño, my native town. Those were my early playing toys. I guess an artist is born with his inherent artistic potentials and then is trained or self trained in one or several artistic skills. I became a trained artist because since I was a High School student I didn´t conceived for my self a different profession or a different way of life.
The subjects of my paintings vary according to my mood when working:
When I am in a good mood, I hear Colombian northern coast live music and I choose to paint about my memories or about dance. The loud and rhythmic music, the dance experience, that my early environment has provided me, has remained in my spirit ever since and resounds in all my being and flows with the joy of life and the joy of painting, which I look forward to sharing with any one open to receive it.
When I am in a quiet mood, I hear classical music and paint without a preconceived idea, thus the result is often an abstract picture, which may have a meaning according to the inner experience of every observer. Other times are transparent bubbles or broken spheres, perhaps to convey the idea of the lack of commitment of human kind with our fragile world.
Edgar Francisko
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