INDEPENDENT 20TH CENTURY: BOOTH 308

Born in Guatemala City, Rodolfo Abularach (1933–2020) is one of Latin America’s most significant artists. From a very young age he showed remarkable draftsmanship and began his formal training in 1946 at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plàsticas. He then studied at the Faculty of Architecture at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and Pasadena City College in California. Between 1955 and 1957, he was hired by the Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología to draw pre-Colombian masks and musical instruments from the museum’s collection. It was then that Abularach began looking to Mayan forms as inspiration for modernist compositions with the encouragement of the influential Guatemalan artist Carlos Mérida.

In 1958, while teaching drawing and painting at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Abularach earned a scholarship from Guatemala’s Directorate of Fine Arts to study at the Art Students League in New York. He remained in New York for 40 years, initially supported by scholarships, including two Guggenheim Fellowships in 1959 and 1960. By the end of 1960, his work had been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the 5th São Paulo Art Biennial, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which acquired his work for its permanent collection.

Abularach became interested in printmaking in the 1960s and, with the support of the Organization of American States (OAS), he studied printing techniques at Pratt Institute from 1962 to 1964. In 1966, he was invited to the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, where he created a series of prints. During this period, Abularach began exploring the human eye, which became an iconic motif for the artist in a variety of media. Later in his career, the volcano—an emblematic image in the Guatemalan landscape—became a favorite subject.

In 1998, he returned to Guatemala City where he died in 2020. Abularach’s work is widely exhibited and collected by museums in the United States, Central and South America, and Europe.