Zúñiga Figueroa, Carlos (1884–1964)

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Zúñiga Figueroa, Carlos (1884–1964)

Carlos Zúñiga Figueroa (b. 1884; d. 1964), Honduran neorealist painter. Zúñiga studied during the 1920s at the San Fernando Academy in Madrid, where he received wide acclaim. He returned to Honduras to become one of Central America's leading painters in the following decades. His work was exhibited widely in Central America and the United States. He specialized in realistic portraits of ordinary people, but he also painted many contemporary Honduran leaders of society and politics. His series of historical paintings of Honduras's independence leaders, especially his Glorification of General Morazán, received favorable recognition. Toward the end of his life he began to focus his work on those at the bottom of the society—vagabonds, beggars, the mentally ill, and the poor. Unfortunately, a great many of these paintings were destroyed in a 1959 fire.

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Evaristo López and Longino Becerra, Honduras: 40 pintores (1989).

                               Ralph Lee Woodward Jr.