The Artist of El Salvador
In this cold weather, his paintings will remind you of spring. Fernando Llort and his colorful paintings are like spring because he depicts many birds and flowers in his paintings. He is also known in El Salvador as the “Nation’s Artist.”
During the 70s, Fernando Llort moved to a small villag
e in Chalatenango, La Palma where he lived most of his life and taught people how to paint and do ceramics. He soon started a cooperative-school where members did wood working. The workshop eventually took the name “The seed of God”. With the first craftsmen the work began with the rustic materials of the area: the same copinol seed and the pine wood, whose drawings were painted with tempera and subsequently varnished. Due to the demand for handicrafts, which also gave rise to the "Palmeño style”, the number of workers increased and the cooperative was formalized in 1977.
The work of Fernando Llort has modernist and pop art influences; however, it is impregnated with the traditional culture with pre- Columbian and pre-Renaissance shades and in its way has included the ethnic, local, and religious incentives which form an idealized world, similar to the community that he himself must have imagined in La Palma. His work ignores the borders between cult and popular art, and has prioritized "social function, teaching and community benefit".
Llort's work had already become a symbol of El Salvador's identity, and especially of La Palma. A commission to erect a temple and the elaboration of the ritual objects - among them a stole - contributed to the mass Pope John Paul II officiated in 1983 in the city of San Salvador. Other creations include a mural at the President Hotel (later destroyed), and the decoration of the chapel "Monsignor Romero" in the Central American University Jose Simeon Canas in 1985.
On October 1, 2013, the Ministry of Culture of the Presidency of El Salvador, designated Llort as the winner of the National Culture Award. According to this entity, the awarding of the award was based on "his merits as a cultural manager and for having transformed the community through the teaching of his artistic designs applied to crafts, which developed a sustainable community industry”.