Five Posters by Lorenzo Homar

Considered “the father of the Puerto Rican poster,” Lorenzo Homar (1913–2004) had a varied career as a graphic designer, printmaker, painter, muralist, political caricaturist, and costume and theatrical set designer; he was also an influential teacher. In a career spanning the 1950s to the late 1990s, he produced some 273 posters, most of them in the medium of silkscreen. Poster House has a collection of more than 200 posters and studies by him. For Homar, a poster had to incorporate formal rigor and specific aesthetic qualities that could communicate the required content or message. In his posters, Homar used a variety of motifs, including human figures and animals, as well as letter types that ranged from precise typography to more expressionistic calligraphy.

These five posters from the 1960s highlight the variety and richness of his work.

Juan Alejo de Arizmendi/Bicentenario de su Nacimiento (Juan Alejo de Arizmendi/Bicentennial of his Birth) from 1960 is loosely based on the 1803 full-length portrait by Campeche of the first Puerto Rico-born archbishop of San Juan. In this same year, Homar also made a small wood engraving of the face of the archbishop and printed it in brown ink. Arizmendi’s figure practically fills the entire composition but is balanced by bold typography in the upper and lower registers. Homar synchronizes the colors here, setting the vibrant purple of the bishop’s vestment against the grays, yellow, red, blue, and green of the other elements.On one side of the figure, he shows the archbishop’s crest and on the other, an unfinished woven basket that  stands for his faith. Although the figure is stylized, Homar’s likeness reflects the features in the Campeche portrait.

Homar was a lifelong reader and lover of literature; he not only read American and Puerto Rican literature but also such Spanish classics as Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quijote (Don Quixote). In 1961, he was given the opportunity to work with Don Quijote in a poster promoting an exhibition of editions of the book in the Casa del Libro in San Juan. The image of the character in Homar’s poster Esposicion Ediciones Don Quijote is based on a miniature (1 ¾ x 1 inches) boxwood engraving that he had originally printed in 1960. Homar was surely aware of the 1955 ink drawing by Picasso of the same subject but his version is more linear and expressionistic than that of his predecessor. Homar made a darker version of the composition in 1967 in black, gray, and yellow ocher.

Between the 1950s and the 1970s, Puerto Rico experienced a  renaissance in the graphic arts, characterized by an outpouring of posters, prints, and drawings as well as frequent exhibitions by both local and international artists. Homar was both a practitioner and a promoter of the graphic arts, as we can see in his poster advertising Grafica de Puerto Rico (Graphics of Puerto Rico) from 1963. In this simple, bold design, he uses bright yellow and olive green as the two main colors with a bright orange letter “G” framing the face of the sun. This anthropomorphic image of the sun would appear as a motif in several of Homar’s posters and prints throughout the 1960s and was directly influenced by Antonio Frasconi’s 1955 book of woodblock prints titled A Book of Many Suns. Homar and Frasconi were lifelong friends and admirers of each other’s work.

Homar designed a total of seven posters for the Casa del Libro in San Juan. In addition to the Don Quijote poster above, El Leon en Los Libros (The Lion in Books) of 1964 stands out. The figure of the crowned lion is based on those found in Spanish emblems and shields going back to the Middle Ages; it also appears in the modern Spanish flag. Intricate, decorative lines define the flamboyant red body of the lion, which holds an ancient book and a banderole with the dates of the exhibition in its front paws.

Homar was also a devotee of the performing arts, especially of music and ballet. For the 8vo Festival de Teatro Puertorriqueno/Los Ballets De San Juan (8th Festival of Puerto Rican Theater/The Ballets of San Juan) in 1965, he designed a poster for the ballet titled “Los renegados” (The Renegades), based on a folktale written by anthropologist Ricardo Alegría. The poster’s color scheme of blue, gray, and black evokes nighttime, while the form of the hanging bat in the foreground is echoed by those of the tiny dancers in white in the background. Five years earlier, Homar had used images of bats in the series of woodcuts he designed to illustrate Ricardo E. Alegría’s book Cuentos folklóricos de Puerto Rico (published in English in 1969 as Three Wishes: Puerto Rican Folktales).

Homar studied art in New York City at the Art Student’s League, Pratt Institute, and the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and was apprenticed and worked at Cartier. He was also influenced by the prints of the WPA artists and those of the Taller de Grafica Popular in Mexico. Most significantly, Homar was inspired by the work of American artist Ben Shahn, especially his ability to work in both fine and commercial art while maintaining a fierce engagement with the political issues of his time.

In these five posters, we see Homar’s extraordinary power of synthesis as a designer, bringing together his precise drawing, imaginative use of color, and varied typography. He would pass on these very skills to several generations of designers and artists through his teaching in Puerto Rico at the Division of Community Education (1951–57), the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (1957–72), and the School of Fine Arts (1965–1976).

Alejandro Anreus was the curator of Puerto Rico in Print: The Posters of Lorenzo Homar. He is Emeritus Professor of Art History and Latin American Studies, William Paterson University. A former curator at the Jersey City Museum and Montclair Art Museum, he is the author of over sixty articles and catalogue essays, and six books on Latin American and Latinx Art.