Miguel Romero is a Honduran artist studying at The University of Toledo (Ohio).  This page is maintained by Don Stierman, Chair of the Latin American Studies Institute.

PLEASE NOTE: These are but scans of color slides taken of original works of art.  Colors are but a pale reproduction of the real thing.  Poor focus is also attributable to the reproduction process and not to the originals.  These descriptions were written by the artist.  Point and click on the image you wish to view in greater detail.

MRp17a.jpg (44193 bytes)For years I felt I was torn between the study of two great artistic traditions: the pre-Colombian Mayan and the classic and classic revival tradition of the western world. Through my studies I found that both the Greeks and the Mayans had a fancy for line in common. This is the first piece in which I was able to combine the rational western space and the thick, dramatic, band-like lines of the Mayans.

 

MRp4a.jpg (40890 bytes)This is a very important work in my career, for it was the first serious experiment I did with magical realism. It is intended to be a disconcerting painting, one which makes no sense at all and thus proves to be disturbing and thought provoking to the viewer. It is the relationship between the objects depicted what is so unusual about it (e.g., the mountains inside the big sea shell, two faces splitting apart, a coral reef that is smaller than an egg, etc.). Yet in the midst of all the confusion it arouses, the work does express something about our human journey through time, nature and society.

MRp35a.jpg (31099 bytes)As a youth I spent several months living in the Lenca region of western Honduras. The Lencas, a syncretic ethnic group, became in the years after this experience an ever more important part of my work. Reality is magical to them, and their form of Catholicism - and religion is an important asset of that magical reality - is quite different from the Roman tradition. What I learned with them lit greatly my conception of just how diverse Latin America is. The Iguana, a quasi-mythical animal in their belief, became, thanks to its heavily textured skin, the perfect imagery to represent a rampantly striving Latin America that is formed by as many colors as there are peoples in it. A culturally rich but still unified Latin America. A Latin America courageously fighting for the utopia at the core of its existence, a battle that is its own survival.

MRs1.JPG (39503 bytes)Sculpture was of all the arts, my first love. Now it is just about all I do. This is one of my truly important carvings. In it I was able to blend the importance of the material and my plastic concerns for the figure. It is a sculpture about the analysis and abstraction of form, about the appropriation of a centuries old imagery: the nude. Undoubtedly it is an expressionist sculpture.

 

 

MRs19.JPG (25910 bytes)Though lately I have been doing a lot of bronze casting, I feel my heart warmest at carving. Sculpture is a hard thing to do because it requires a lot of knowledge, especially when it comes to keeping a balance between craftsmanship and expressive intentions. Though touch, sense of full-roundness, serpentine rhythms and wood grain are important in this work, it is how the pieces complement each other what is unique about this piece.

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Last updated 01/12/01

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