Today's blog is about the work of a Bolivian painter and mixed-media artist who you may not know. Her name? Maria Luisa Pacheco. (1919-1982). Yet, she was an international award-winning artist who also received three consecutive Guggenheim fellowships.
Pacheco studied at the art academy in her hometown of La Paz, Bolivia, where she would also be a faculty member. Later, she worked as an illustrator and editor of the literary section for a daily newspaper.
A scholarship awarded by the Spanish government, allowed her to continue her studies in Madrid.This is where she explored techniques to achieve a 3-dimensional effect on a 2-dimensional surface.
Eventually, Pacheco would settle in New York where she worked as a magazine illustrator and textile designer. She would live the rest of her life in New York as an American citizen. Yet, it was her homeland that called to her in her art - particularly as she evolved toward Cubism.
In fact, her best-known art reflected her childhood views of Bolivia. Her most famous and masterful paintings were inspired by the indigenous people as well as the glaciers and peaks of the Andes mountains.
Below are some of Pacheco's abstract paintings of the mountains in all their majesty. (She incorporated wood, sand and cloth into her collages and paintings to add textural relief. )
