Chile's "Monkey Drawer"

The dull gallery walls were aflame with pictures of orange and crimson plazas in Valparaiso and Santiago. Luis Herrera Guevara, a Chilean "primitive" painter of great splash & dash, was having his first U.S. exhibition, in Manhattan. He showed sailing boats in a topsy-turvy port, ornate buildings with leaning fac,ades, a bus looking like an enlarged caterpillar, a self-portrait revealing a jaundiced gentleman with jet hair. Critics were enchanted. They could not fail to make comparisons with the pigmental innocence and charm of France's late, great "primitive" Henri "Douanier" Rousseau.

Chile's Herrera was not copycatting anybody. He was middleaged, had painted a lot before he ever saw Rousseau's work. His father, a successful businessman, called all artists "monkey drawers," made his son swear by the Holy Virgin that he would not take up art as long as his father lived. Young Luis kept his oath till he was in his middle 30s. But when he was a schoolboy he made such beautiful maps that his geography teacher told the other children to copy them.

Luis became a lawyer in the small town of San Bernardo near Santiago. Says he: "My clients were all poor and they never paid. I always managed to get them out of jail. Sometimes they gave me a chicken or a basket of eggs. . . . I was so successful that one day the judge said he was going to make me public prosecutor, that San Bernardo was attracting all the petty thieves. . . . So I was made public prosecutor"

When Papa Herrera died, Luis gave up prosecuting for paint. He says with emotion: "My father made me lose so many years! But my health is very good. The life of the artist in Chile is miserable. Luckily my father left me enough so I don't have to be a poor artist. It is also good that I never had a teacher. I paint as I like."

Luis Herrera Guevara, who has not a hair on his head, sports a black wig in winter, a reddish one in summer. He admits: "Often I make mistakes, put two balconies on a house when there should be three. . ." This does not bother his admirers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.