José Rosa Castellanos

José Rosa Castellanos
Santurce, PR, 1939

Printmaker and painter. Rosa first studied art under Rafael Tufiño; his training in the graphic arts took place in DIVEDCO, at the Campeche Studio and Galllery run by Domingo García in San Juan, and under Lorenzo Homar at the Graphic Arts Workshop of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. From 1973 to 1986, Rosa was director of that Workshop, where he became a master of silkscreen technique. In his work he captures images and subjects associated with the popular culture of Puerto Rico, such as bar life, politics, and the religiosity of the island’s people, generally in a humorous, amusing manner. In the seventies he developed a novel style characterized by the integration of text into his compositions, using the text as a graphic element. In 1998 he was honored at the Twelfth San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Prints. His paintings have visual parallels with his graphic art, and are characterized by an emphasis on the underlying drawing and by the sharpness of the lines and the figures’ outlines.  -Via MAPR