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Online gallery for Puerto Rican and Latin American Art

www.galeriapalomas.com

22/10/2026

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MANUEL HERNÁNDEZ ACEVEDO:
Marisol me encanta

Self-taught Manuel Hernández Acevedo (1921–1989) was a celebrated Puerto Rican naïve painter and printmaker. While primarily celebrated for his graphic work at DIVEDCO, his original paintings (oil on board, paper or canvas) are exceptionally rare on the public auction market, often traded privately or held in institutional permanent collections.

Approx. 24 x 18 in, - oil on heavy weight art paper, unframed size

$4800 Estimated Value sold framed

22/10/2026

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EPIFANIO “FANO” IRIZARRY:
(Untitled - flowers in vase)

Fano Irizarry (1915-2001) was a ‘Costumbrista’ painter from Ponce, PR. A student of artist Miguel Pou, he studied in Germany and the Art Students League of New York City. He had an early career at DIVEDCO until 1963.

Approx. 30 x 24 in, - oil on canvas unframed size

$10,200 Estimated Value sold framed

22/10/2026

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NELSON SAMBOLÍN:
(Untitled)

Known primarily as a printmaker and graphic artist, this painting is a very rare painting by Sambolín (1944). He attended Pratt Institute and the University of Puerto Rico, where he currently teaches.

22.5 x 22.5 in. - oil pastels on heavy cardstock

$3600

15/10/2026

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Happy Birthday! :
Roberto Moya (1931-2008)

Puerto Rican painter, printmaker and digital artist - a life dedicated to color, form and innovation, he would’ve been 95 years old today.

ABOUT ROBERTO MOYA
www.robertomoya.com

From the age of nine, Moya was obsessed with drawing. “Just before the breakout of World War II I was sent up to New York on the San Jacinto to visit the the family. Ours was the last boat to leave Puerto Rico so by way of fate I was to remain in New York until after the war ended.” School in NY was difficult because of the language barrier. “I had a tendency to withdraw into myself. I understood both languages but was reluctABOUTant to speak either. I began drawing as a comfort. I drew on everything, in the margins of my schoolbooks and my test papers. The pen was a wondrous tool that allowed me to achieve distance from everyone, and a secret world.”

Eventually, Moya studied at the Pratt Graphic Arts Center, the New School for Social Research, the Phoenix School of Design, and the Arts Students League, as well as the University of Southern California.

Puerto Rico always beckoned Moya. Memories from his early years on the island, his strong loving grandmother, and the vividly explosive hues of Puerto Rico, sparked his desire to return. After a decade of going back and forth he settled in Puerto Rico in 1968.

“When my work was embraced by my people, it was the most wondrous gift, a fulfilling experience that I have never ceased to be grateful for … finally, I could settle down and create.” His works have been displayed in numerous exhibitions in Puerto Rico and abroad, including a 1999 retrospective in Hawaii.

Moya ventured into digital graphics in 1989 and created the first digital portfolio in Puerto Rico, which led to an invitation from the Pratt Graphic Arts Center to exhibit his work and lead a seminar. In the early nineties, he was named resident artist of the University of Puerto Rico where he was a professor and taught classes from his studio in digital art.

He often approached the digital medium as a research tool for his painting, what he called, “an electronic notebook.” This allowed for the exploration of colors before working on the canvas. His work is semi abstract, characterized by quick strokes and heavy pigment which imparts great expressive force to the images. This carries through to his printmaking where he combines silkscreen and lithography, as well as a combination of the two.

13/10/2026

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Lorenzo Homar:
Recent Sale

1976, Participación de Puerto Rico en la XXI Olimpiada Montreal
Signed in pencil by the artist
32 x 21 inches

In preparation for the 1979 Pan American games in San Juan, Lorenzo Homar (1913-2005) was named in 1974 the official artist for the design of logos, medals and posters. Throughout this period, he developed a design based on a Taino ceremonial collar and the Olympic Flame which over time evolved into the graphic icon representing the 1979 games seen in this 1976 poster celebrating Puerto Rico’s participation in the Montreal Olympics.

As an avid gymnast himself, Homar was interested in movement. The logotypes under development for the 1979 Pan American Games were colorful, figurative representations of each sport. The Montreal poster previewed his intentions with a significantly sophisticated and more playfully engaging figure-ground exercise characteristically found in his calligraphy work. Albeit, the final logotypes for the Pan American Games posters were reduced to caricatures bereft of the impactful recognition of the venue logos used as directional signs.

08/09/2026

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Puerto Rican Art:
What is it exactly?

It is far easier to define visually and let the works speak for themselves than answer this directly without falling into the larger issue of Latin American regional art. In that sense, a cultural divide occurred in Latin America after ties with the European continent were cut with independence. But what happens to Puerto Rican Art when its traditional ties to Europe were stripped and replaced by a new upstart nation in a far more complicated and distinct cultural and political reality?

A bit of background may help explain. Notwithstanding the predominance of France in western art throughout the XIX and early XX centuries, Latin American Art took on a heavy political tilt to claim its revolutionary relevance - something quite missing with the continent’s anglican, northern neighbors. A factor perhaps best explained by the importance given to the arts in these countries as a political instrument. Art, after all, served the past interests of the political colonial hegemony of Crown and Church. Latin American Art to some extent continued along the same functional track, but defined beyond any cultural dominance that would rekindle a form of cultural neocolonialism.

And it’s that political tilt in Latin American Art that eventually influenced its northern neighbor in return. Modernism relied on being revolutionary. Mixed with a nationalistic fervor for reform, Mexican artists helped introduce Modernism to the United States through social advocacy.

An effort which continued after the war when numerous returning veterans took their GI-Bill benefits to study art in Mexico (among them Rafael Tufiño) with teachers like David Alfaro Siqueiros who follow them back north.

In that context, Puerto Rican Art deserves consideration. For the most part, it is an expression that seeks to impart a particular narrative. It’s art-parlante, usually figurative, and culturally distinct from art in the United States. It’s regional, seamlessly blended among Antillean trends, to the degree that Cuban and Dominican artists are almost indistinguishable, as much as mainland-born artists like Tufiño, Moya and Domingo García are from their island-born counterparts.

Puerto Rican Art is different from the mainstream, despite the many attempts to internationalize it. Puerto Ricans can assimilate, but in their own terms.

Then, do all Puerto Rican artists do Puerto Rican Art?

No.

Some have successfully assimilated to the type favored by art fairs - working in a context indistinguishable from New York to Shanghai. Not that there’s anything wrong with such sociocultural, cross-border integration. It’s just not Puerto Rican Art.

And that is the relevant question that local museums inadvertently raise in their selected permanent exhibitions. What is Puerto Rican Art?

It speaks to its people in the way that many Puerto Ricans relate to the content, colors, and Orixa imagery of Jean Michel Basquiat’s paintings. Are Basquiat paintings then Puerto Rican Art? Born in Brooklyn, raised in Santurce. Entrenched in the island Yoruba traditions of his maternal ancestors. Checks all the boxes.

Puerto Rican Art is different. And for sure we can say it’s ours. Just don’t ask us why.

02/09/2026

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ANTONIO MARTORELL:
(Untitled - head of garlic)

Painter, graphic artist and writer (1939), Martorell is one of the most recognized current Puerto Rican artists in recent decades.

Approx. 38 x 24 in. - oil pastels drawing on thin paper

$2500

02/09/2026

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MIGUEL SACARELLO:
Concéntrico

Ceramic pottery, 22 inch diameter

His work is characterized by geometric minimalist structures inspired by architectural concepts.

$1800

Dirección

277 Calle De La Luna
San Juan
00901

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