ART

Santa Ana and neighboring Escazú, immediately southwest of San José, have long been magnets for artists. Escazú in
particular is home to many contemporary artists: Christina Fournier; the brothers Jorge, Manuel, Javier, and Carlos Mena;
and Dinorah Bolandi, who was awarded the nation's top cultural prize. Here, in the late 1920s, Teodorico Quiros and a
group of contemporaries provided the nation with its own identifiable art style--the Costa Rican "Landscape" movement--
which expressed in stylized forms the flavor and personality of the drowsy little mountain towns with their cobblestone
streets and adobe houses backdropped by volcanoes. The artists, who called themselves the Group of New Sensibility,
began to portray Costa Rica in fresh, vibrant colors.

Quiros had been influenced by the French impressionists. His painting El Portón Rojo ("The Red Gate") hangs in the
Costa Rican Art Museum. In 1994, at age 77, he was awarded the Premio Magón award for lifetime achievement in the
"creation and promotion of Costa Rican artistic culture." The group also included Luisa Gonzales de Saenz, whose
paintings evoke the style of Magritte; the expressionist Manuel de la Cruz, the "Costa Rican Picasso"; as well as Enrique
Echandi, who expressed a Teutonic sensibility following studies in Germany.

One of the finest examples of sculpture from this period, the chiseled stone image of a child suckling his mother's breast,
can be seen outside the Maternidad Carit maternity clinic in southern San José. Its creator, Francisco Zuñigo (Costa
Rica's most acclaimed sculptor), left for Mexico in a fit of artistic pique in 1936 when the sculpture, titled Maternity, was
lampooned by local critics (one said it looked more like a cow than a woman).

Isidro Con Wong, from Puntarenas but of Mongolian descent, is known for a style redolent of magic realism and has
works in permanent collections in several U.S. and French museums. Once a poor farmer, he started painting with his
fingers and achiote, a red paste made from a seed. "Children, drunk bohemians, or the mentally regressed--in other words
the innocent chosen by God--are those who understand my works," he says. His paintings sell for about $35,000 each.

In Puerto Limón, Leonel González paints images of the Caribbean port with figures reduced to thick black silhouettes
against backgrounds of splendid colors. The most irreverent of contemporary artists is perhaps Roberto Lizano, who
collides Delacroix with Picasso and likes to train his eye on the pomposity of ecclesiastics.

Alajuelan artist Gwen Barry is acclaimed for her "Movable Murals"--painted screens populated by characters from
Shakespeare and the Renaissance. Rafa Fernández is heavily influenced by his many years in Spain, defined as "magic
realism, where the beauty and grandness of women is explored with a sense of intimacy and suggestion." His ladies often
appear in quasi-Victorian guise wearing floral hats. And Rolando Castellón, who won acclaim in the U.S. and was a
director of the New York Museum of Modern Art before returning to Costa Rica in 1993, translates elements of indigenous
life into 3-D art. His studio gallery in Zapote, Moyo Coyatzin, is named for the indigenous deity of creativity. And you can't
travel far in Costa Rica these days without seeing examples of the works of another Escazú artist, Katya de Luisa, whose
stunning photo collages are complex allegories. Katya initiated "Encounters With Art," a collaborative effort in which artists
from different media contribute to a single work. Aldo Canale works with stained glass, producing what Chakris
Kussalanant calls "a tendency for the organic-- large glasses full of sensuous lines and earthy colors." And a Cuban
aesthetic finds its way into the works of Limonese artist Edgar León, who was influenced by travels in Cuba and Mexico.

The Ministry of Culture sponsors art lessons and exhibits on Sunday in city parks. University art galleries, the Museo de
Arte Costarricense, and many smaller galleries scattered throughout San José exhibit works of all kinds