Costa Rican Art : ‘Clima Natal’ Opens for West Coast Run

They are large. They are black and white. And, with one or two exceptions, they are easily recognizable works of art.

They are the 21 pencil, collage and pen-and-ink pieces by three contemporary Costa Rican artists who prefer a traditional figurative style over abstraction.

Titled “Clima Natal,” the exhibit opened Friday at Southwestern College Art Gallery. It will run through Oct. 28. First shown at Harvard University in 1985, the exhibit has been reduced in scope for its West Coast premiere.

“Clima Natal,” or “Native Climate,” illustrates Latin American artists’ interest in human affairs rather than the technicalities of color, line or the concept of creating art, which has often preoccupied U. S. artists over the last 30 years.

“They address the state of the human condition as they find it in Central America, which is loneliness, pain, terror, disintegration of the body, which refers to the disintegration of the spirit,” said Shifra Goldman.

Goldman, an international authority on Chicano and Latin American art who lives in Los Angeles, wrote the exhibit’s brief catalogue.

The works span a range of styles reflecting the ages of the artists: Fernando Carballo, Rolando Faba, and Fernando Castro. Carballo, born in 1941, is almost 15 years older than Faba and Castro, who were born in 1954 and 1955 respectively.

Carballo’s “Family Portrait” series is chiefly figurative detailings of isolated heads. Castro’s series, called “About Man,” is carefully detailed pen-and-ink works of full-length figures--often skeletal figures--colliding with a violent force, represented by a broad brush stroke.

In “The Hunters,” Faba creates intricately worked pencil drawings that juxtapose civilians with soldiers in face masks. He also uses target range silhouettes in two of his series, superimposing the target forms against a abstract background in “Endangered Species.”

“We have sort of a return to figurative art, an art with subject matter and content,” Goldman said in a phone interview. “People will go in and find work they can identify with, with almost a sense of relief and delight.”

Goldman offered the show to Southwestern College art instructor Michael Schnorr, who was eager to display it.

“She called me and said, ‘We have these hot people,’ ” Schnorr said. “It’s a big burden for us to mount the show, build the frames and build the shipping crates.” But, because of the strength of the art, Schnorr decided it was a project worth taking on. “If it generates any kind of dialogue, it’s worth it,” he said.

The exhibit, which will travel to three other California cities, is co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Artists Call Against U. S. Intervention in Central America and the consul general of Costa Rica in Los Angeles. It has been booked for the next 12 months by San Francisco’s Mission Cultural Center, UC Santa Cruz and Los Angeles’ Otis Art Institute. Its West Coast showing is an homage to Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who won the 1987 Nobel peace prize.

“Clima Natal” comes at a time when Latin American and Latino art exhibits are enjoying an unprecedented popularity. Time magazine dedicated its July 11 cover story to Latino culture, highlighting the growth of Latino art.

The San Diego Museum of Art will get into the act in May by bringing the Bronx Museum’s much heralded “Latin American Presence in the United States” show to town. The La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art is organizing works by Tijuana artists for an exhibit at its downtown gallery.

The three artists in “Clima Natal” are part of a Central American artists’ collective named after a phrase in a poem by Roque Dalton, a revolutionary poet who was killed in El Salvador.

Curator for “Clima Natal” was Gordon Fuglie, formerly with the Grunwalk Center for the Graphic Arts at UCLA. Fuglie pared the number of works, shaped the show, and gave it form and texture, making it a stronger exhibit, Goldman said.

Goldman says she wants to promote Latin American art in this country, which she feels focuses on the traditions that grew out of European art.

“Latin Americans have another history and another reality,” she said, adding that they were often pioneers in art movements. Roberta Matta of Chile was a major figure in surrealism. And Wifredo Lam of Cuba was also an important surrealist. But these and other Latin American artists, who often immigrated to Europe, received scant recognition as innovators, she said.

“This has to be changed,” Goldman said. “If we leave out modern Latin America, we have a distorted view of the history of modern arts on a world level.”