PRESS RELEASE The Art of Communicating Art
Arte Papel, S.A.’s Limited Editions Have Universal Appeal Ramón Avila is a painter and a Graphic artist. Originally from Spain, he emigrated to Brazil in 1957, worked as an art director for the J.W. Thompson advertising agency for seven years, and from there, became an active participant in the art world of Central America, Miami and Spain. He finally settled in Guatemala with his own advertising agency. Ramón Avila was an artist with a dream: to make fine art more accessible to people. In 1980, he established Arte Papel, S.A., staking his future on the belief that screen-printing could offer him the liberty of discovering a way to successfully interpret and transfer the graphic and visual effects of original paintings onto paper. Ramón encouraged his family — wife, Marisa, his daughter, Isabel, who is a graphic designer, and his three sons, Ricardo, Eduardo and Fernando (now deceased) — to join him in his venture. Ramón’s first steps were to fly to Chicago for an intensive three-day screen printing seminar led by Michael Green and his sister, Merrill, of Advance International. The Greens taught him everything they knew about inks, mesh preparation, emulsions and equipment. “They were very helpful to my father,” says Ricardo Avila, now general manager of Arte Papel, S.A. “The Greens went out of their way to take him to artistic workshops that used screen printing for limited editions.” Ramón returned to Guatemala with the equipment and supplies he needed and set about working with his hands: making color separations, pull printing and adjusting colors. Contemporary artist Roberto González Goyri, a Guatemalan with international recognition, was the first one to entrust Ramón with his work. Ramón hand pull printed 30 limited edition prints, using Buckeye Ltd. 320 grams, 100% Rag Cotton, acid free and pH neutral, with a final size of 20 x 26 inches. The work took three months and the hand color separation of 42 inks. The result was a success: one happy artist and 30 happy art patrons. This experience led the Avilas to look for new graphic solutions that would save time without sacrificing quality. Ricardo studied darkroom camera techniques and experimented with types of films and developers, filters, aperture lens, exposure times — all with one premise in mind. “My father taught us that ‘color is form,’” explains Ricardo. “I observed his way of painting, from light to dark. The challenge is to interpret and preserve just the right texture and subtleties of the original.” Because each artist is unique, the process of interpretation that the Avilas have developed over years does not apply to every work. “Once we have the forms in the film positives and insulated in the meshes, we apply the colors,” explains Ricardo. “By way of trial and error we progressively add them by transparency until we've reached the specified results that the original — and the artist — demands.” Guatemalan art critic Lionel Méndez Dávila offers a compliment: "What the people of Arte Papel, S.A. do, is to paint again the original work, but by printing media, using their knowledge and interpretative sensibility of color, form and their screen printing technique." Today, Arte Papel, S.A. has produced nearly 300 limited editions for artists in Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Miami, Brazil and Spain. They have won three Awards of Merit in SGIA’s Golden Image Awards Competition, and have entered competitions from Barcelona to Taipei.
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