Jorge R. Camacho Lazo (January 5, 1934 – March 30, 2011) was a
Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
n painter.
Born in
Havana
Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.Carlos M. Luis were well versed in contemporary painting. It was Carlos who introduced him to the paintings of
Paul Klee
Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...
,
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , ; ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan Spanish painter, sculptor and Ceramic art, ceramist. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona ...
,
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 - January 15, 1955), known as just Yves Tanguy (; ), was a French Surrealist painter.
Biography
Tanguy was the son of a retired navy captain, and was born January 5, 1900, at the Ministry of Naval Aff ...
and
Giorgio de Chirico
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( ; ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. His ...
. In 1953, Camacho travelled to Mexico, where he lived for a year and met his colleague
José Luis Cuevas
José Luis Cuevas (February 26, 1934 – July 3, 2017) was a Mexican artist, he often worked as a painter, writer, draftsman, engraver, illustrator, and printmaker. Cuevas was one of the first to challenge the then dominant Mexican muralism ...
- they both investigated the sources of Mayan culture. Camacho's first major influence was the
Wifredo Lam
Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla (; December 8, 1902 – September 11, 1982), better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cubans, Afro-Cuban spirit and culture. Inspired by ...
exhibit at the University of Havana in 1955. Camacho was also influenced by the paintings of
Rufino Tamayo
Rufino del Carmen Arellanes Tamayo (August 25, 1899 – June 24, 1991) was a Mexican painter of Zapotec peoples, Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca City, Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico.Sullivan, 170-171Ades, 357 Tamayo was active in the mid-20th cen ...
and
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of nat ...
.
He had two exhibitions in Havana, in 1955 and 1958, before moving to Paris in 1959. Once in Paris, Camacho immediately adopted
Surrealism
Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
and in 1960 had a show at Galerie Raymond Cordier. Camacho met surrealist poet
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; ; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...
during an exhibit of works by
Toyen
Toyen (born Marie Čermínová; 21 September 1902 – 9 November 1980) was a Czech painter, drafter, and illustrator and a member of the surrealist movement.
In 1923, the artist adopted the professional pseudonym Toyen. The name Toyen has be ...
in 1961- his meeting with Breton truly tied him to the Surrealist movement. This exhibit also served as the setting for a 1962 event with the surrealist group, where he created an antireligious tribute to Oscar Panizza that featured aggressive paintings, including L'Immaculée conception des Papes.
André Breton wrote a preface to Camacho's 1964 exhibition at the Galerie Mathias Fels, describing his work as a painting of cruelty. Camacho's works, with their claw-like forms laden with ossuaries, borrowed their harsh themes from novels by Sade and Bataille. Camacho discovered esotericism with
René Alleau
René Alleau (6 August 1917 – 18 October 2013) was a French author, historian and consulting engineer. The focus of his numerous works are symbology and alchemy, the occult and secret societies. As well as his own works, he contributed articles ...
, who exhibited his works in a show titled The Dance of Death, in 1976, at Galerie de Seine, writing, "It is essentially the Caput mortuum in its application, hence the emblematic importance of the skull in all his paintings."
Camacho was also fascinated with
ornithology
Ornithology, from Ancient Greek ὄρνις (''órnis''), meaning "bird", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", is a branch of zoology dedicated to the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related discip ...
, which led to two exhibitions: History of Birds, an exhibition of paintings at Galerie Maeght, and an exhibition of his photos at Galerie Mathias Fels. Many of his paintings are haunted by the ibijau, a bird he observed on a trip to Venezuela. A visit to Peru inspired his first sand landscapes, which were shown in 1984 at Galerie Albert Loeb, under the title The Philosophy of the Landscape, in a reference to shamanism. In 2003, the same year as his retrospective at the Maison de l’Amérique latine, Camacho also had an exhibition at Galerie Tessa Hérold titled The Book of Flowers, which presented his new paintings of reinvented flora.
Camacho's avowal is best captured in his quote, "Surrealism is, without a doubt, the most important poetic creation of the XX century, because it is a world open to enchantment. As for the present? A series of works inspired by the magical and hermetic circle of the Shaman, that medicine man ever present in the life of all primitive societies. As to the future? A perennial openness to new horizons."
Camacho lived in Paris from 1975 until his death in 2011.