Background
Guillermo Silva Santamaria was born 7 June 1921 in Bogotá, Colombia.
Guillermo Silva Santamaria was born 7 June 1921 in Bogotá, Colombia.
In 1937, he went to Paris and studied with the French master Pierre Daguet an impressionist style similar to Van Gogh.
He trained many students in his techniques during his teaching career in Mexico before moving to India and settling in Europe. After 2 years, he returned to Colombia, but had no success with his art and took a job in a pharmaceutical company. He continued to study art, and participated in art shows, holding his first solo exhibit in 1948.
That same year, he travelled to the United States and France, returning to Bogatá in 1949 to establish the first stained glass workshop in Colombia with French artist Jean Crotti.
Silva began teaching at the Escuela de Bellas Artes (School of Fine Arts) in 1950 and again was studying in Europe in 1951. Foreign a decade, he struggled with his art, but after a vacation to Machu Picchu in Peru, he began producing geometric abstractions.
Praise from his contemporaries led him to move to Mexico in 1956, where he studied engraving with Isidoro Ocampo at Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "Louisiana Esmeralda". The following year, Silva traveled to Saint Louis, Missouri to take a printmaking course at Washington University.
His first show in the United States occurred in 1957 and he returned to Mexico City and began teaching at the Iberoamericana University and later at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Silva"s works demonstrated his mastery of intaglio and he was credited with being unequaled in Latin America. Though often depicting gruesome themes, the works were satirically presented social commentaries. In the 1970s, Silva worked in a studio in Mexico City as well as one in Malaga, Spain and exhibited widely from New York to Toronto, to Spain, to Mexico City, to Arizona, to New Mexico.
He died in his motor home near Roenland, Norway on 29 June 2007 and was buried in Peterborough, Norway on 3 July 2007.
His exhibit which was scheduled to open August 5 was to continue as planned.