by Mike Sabine

Managua-based artist Reynaldo Bosque Estrada is noted for his wide array of styles, themes and techniques. They range from still life to abstract, traditional Nicaraguan street scenes to playful sensuality. Some of his work could be described as a mix of all the above.

Bosque, age 27, works in oil, acrylic, pastel, on canvas, or pencil and paper. He also specializes in family and individual portraits. 

His work is on display in Managua at the Codice, Pleyades and Epickentrol galleries.  Internationally, his paintings are exhibited in Miami at Artnica, Dossier in Los Angeles and Berheim in Panama. Bosque has sold over 600 works.

Ricardo Maya’s work is described as “Showing the influence of realism without leaving realism, with a symbolic language to evoke a connection between memories and the present, playing the atemporal.” Maya, from Camaguey, Cuba, came to Nicaragua ten years ago because “the situation there was complicated. There is no freedom of expression. All I could have done in Cuba is teach.”

Maya, 36, lives in Granada where he has a gallery, ClaroOscuro. He is married with a daughter.

He paints in oil on canvas or paper, and sculpts in clay. “My works are stories told with symbols with meaning to me.” Women’s torsos, mixed with other images, are often an image in his work. “It’s not for sensuality. It represents the earth, because it is the part of the body that gives life. This also reflects the influence of Roman culture that has survived.” Maya also paints landscapes, which he says, “is a way to touch base.”

by Steve Tope

To say that Rubén Darío is the poet laureate of Nicaragua is certainly true, but it is also an understatement. He is a national icon; a symbol of independence and a spokesman for the national soul and conscience. He is also the acknowledged founder of the modernist poetry movement in all of Latin America, leaving behind the European Spanish tradition and starting a uniquely new world style.

For Nicaraguans, poetry is the foremost means of creative expression, be it for political, social or purely artistic purposes. Cab drivers might entertain you with their verse and newspapers feature pieces submitted by readers weekly. Rubén Darío was the founder of this tradition, the first name among a continuing list of Nicaraguan poets.

All schoolchildren study his work; many Nicaraguans can recite at least one piece of his verse.  His name graces countless places around the country including the National Theater in Managua.  Where other nations might put generals or politicians, it is Darío’s portrait that is featured on the 100 cordoba bill. His birthplace, Metapa was renamed Cuidad Darío in his honor.

by Mike Sabine

Granada-native Luis Garay is a noted artist who been called the best young Latin American illustrator working today. He has won two international awards and is featured in “Under the Spell of the Moon,” a compilation book of the world’s best children’s book illustrators. Garay, age 39, has also written three books, The Kite, Pedrito’s Day and The Long Road. His stark, realistic style portrays the realities of growing up in Central America. They are tales of the everyday lives of children in Nicaragua, poignant but hopeful. Unlike much of children’s literature, his work contains no fantasy.

 “I call my style social realism. I wanted kids in North America to know what life was like here. North American kids always think they’re lacking something,” Garay said.  “What was I supposed to write about and paint? Snowmen? I went to my roots, what I know. My instincts told me what to do.” Garay gets the inspiration for his stories “by going into the streets, observing and photographing the lives of children around Nicaragua,”

by Luis Morales Alonso

The pre-Colombian heritage, with the best artistic testimonies evidenced by polychromatic pottery and stone statues, is our main artistic inheritance from the old days dating back to 200BC. During the Colonization, religious paintings and images occupied a privileged place, but there are few convincing examples from that period that we can enumerate; although the main evidence is the urban layout of our colonial towns and some buildings with colonial architecture that have survived during those 500 years.

In fact, our artistic styles were influenced by the development of the arts in Central Europe during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Romantic paintings, portraits, still lifes, flowers and landscapes were developed by Nicaraguan painters from León, the Capital, and Granada, the second most important city and main commercial port of the country until the nineteenth century.

by  P. Hukov

Among the artisans of San Juan del Oriente is Marcell Navarro Ruiz, the creator of multicolor dream images rendered on ceramic plates. Navarro’s abstract images tell tales of adventures, sirens of the sea, mysteries of the night, the romance of Nicaragua, and meteorites in the cosmos in a carnival of colors.

Marcell Navarro Ruiz has been portraying these dreams in acrylic paint on clay for 12 years. He works in the back of his simple home, his wood stove smoking nearby, a 15-inch clay plate cradled under his arm, and a tray with dozens of hues at his elbow.

Navarro, 31, taught himself by studying the works of great artists, especially his favorite artist, Picasso. The visions he renders on ceramic begin as thoughts and feelings. He sketches abstract forms with a pencil on paper, then transfers the outline in pencil to a concave red pottery plate after a background coat of black or white paint has been applied. He paints quickly with swift strokes —he was definitely a kid who stayed inside the lines in his coloring book.

by Fabio Fabbo

A marvelous technician, Winston Miranda has a great knack for surprise and a bold sense of composition. A true artist, Miranda isn’t a slave to any one idea or style, he is always investigating his own technical ability and vivid imagination. Miranda has excelled with classical still life’s in the vain of Henri Fantin Latour, mixed media, realism and today is working in a style closest to surrealism.

Using Nicaragua’s rich and colorful backdrops, Miranda daringly overlays robust still life forms. Layering upon windows that explore different shadows, reflections and distortions, Miranda includes forms such as fruit, apparitions and themes current to Nicaragua. With these platforms he explores the minutia of different light and shadows. His priority and pre-occupation, his family, also make subtle appearances. This is fertile ground for Miranda’s attention to detail and still life precision. His bright and lively current work entices the viewer into a dialogue questioning the boundaries of what we assume is real.

by Martha Leach

Bygocha doesn’t arm himself with an array of paintbrushes, his artistic tool of choice is a spatula. Applying paint in thick layers, the result is an intensity of color that bursts from the canvas and pleases the eye. The paintings of Byron Gómez Chavarría, better known as Bygocha, a nickname derived from the first syllables of his name, reflect his passion for nature and his affinities with Nicaragua, Europe and his loved ones.

 In his landscapes, Bygocha depicts a vision of nature where the simplest scene is full of complexities. With dancing flecks of foam and sunlight, water and land arouse the senses. Flowering trees, waterfalls and volcanoes come alive with scent and motion while reflecting the tranquility he finds in such natural wonders.