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Zachrisson, Julio (Augusto)
(b Panama City, 5 Feb 1930). Panamanian printmaker and painter, active in Spain. He studied under Juan Manuel Cedeño at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura in Panama City and from 1953 to 1959 at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. In 1961 he moved to Madrid, where he began his important work at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Zachrisson’s etchings, drypoints, lithographs and woodcuts tell stories, mock tradition and criticize society, encompassing subjects as varied as the circus and the myth of Icarus. In works such as the Death of Chimbombó (1963; New York, MOMA) he depicts life with humour and satire in a cruel and even tragic vision. His fantastic world is peopled by an entourage of monsters, witches and grotesque figures drawn from Panamanian urban folklore, Spanish literature, classical mythology and personal experiences. Zachrisson’s paintings, produced since the 1970s, tend to be less detailed than his etchings but are equally biting in their use of irony, secual explicitness and references to his Panamanian background. Formally, his paintings emphasize colour and design over volume, with flat intense hues, hard edges and nearly invisible brushstrokes, as in Cazanga (1984; Panama City, Mus. A. Contemp.). Zachrisson’s work has been widely exhibited, both in Latin American and in Spain, where in 1996 he was awarded the prestigious Goya-Aragón Prize.
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