* From Columbus to Panama

* Your Preferred

* Destination: Buenos Aires

* Return to the Motherland

* With style

* From angels and shoots

“Mom taught me to read and write before going to school. My parents fell in love and had to fight against racism of the time”

Alfredo Sinclair is a wealth of experience.

It has a boundless imagination and accumulated wealth on their backs that make it a master of Latin American art.

The talk was in a studio, located at the back of his residence in the neighborhood of Bethany. It is your battlefield, according to its own definition. In this area of fabrics and brushes were created hundreds of paintings from the history with a capital of painting the American continent.

Sinclair has a quiet elegance, an English air inherited from his father. His voice is low, but firm. Has a sincere smile and a friendly fraternal.

Turns 90 in December and has a prodigious memory, as if the events of his life had happened yesterday. Remembers everything and share it without reservation.

A few days ago received a recognition by the Andres Bello Convention by all of his work, an event held on 6 October in the Library Ernest J. Castillero.

It is the first time that a Panamanian receive this distinction. One of the many honors he has received this man who sums up his existence in one sentence: “It was a great fight.”

Colon to Panama

Ballesteros Alfredo Sinclair was born in Panama on December 8, 1914. English hydraulic engineer son of George Sinclair and teacher Quintina Panamanian Ballesteros, a native of Gatun.

“Mom taught me to read and write before going to school. My parents fell in love and had to struggle against the racism of the time,” he said.

At eight days old, his mother returned with him to the province of Colon, where the family resides.

Alfredo exerts a kid all kinds of crafts, a waiter newsboy.

Alfredo is the youngest of four children: Alicia, Evelina and Gilberto, who was his first inspiration. “Gilberto he liked to draw on the floor and I copied it.”

Outside the house, who encouraged him to follow the path of the strokes was his fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Gonzalez. “She noticed my talent. I drew maps of the talks that she dictated.”

Your Favourites

Alfredo Sinclair still marvels at the thought of the caveman who left their hunting weapons to paint.

Admire Giotto because it gives meaning to the human figure.

A Leonardo Da Vinci is revered because it “created the chiaroscuro, formerly painted in a flat direction, no shadows.”

A Miguel Angel calls it “the great artist of all time. I paint the Sistine Chapel, where in his time there was no scaffolding there now”

His first visit to the country’s capital in 1938. It was the discovery of a reality that completely seduced.

“I did not know Panama, I really liked the atmosphere. When I returned to Columbus I set the goal of returning to further my studies.” He kept his word.

Between 1941 and 1945 had a dual existence. Of days worked in the company Neon Product, which bent neon tubes, then use experience in their creative tasks. “On the Avenue B and Salsipuedes neon signs are still that I did.”

When night fell he took course for the National School of Painting, where he was a student of the national painter Humberto Ivaldi, who shared the secrets of drawing Sinclair.

In these classes know about inseparable companions: Jeanine Juan Bautista, Francisco Cebamanos, Ciro Oduber and Jose Zabala.

In 1943 he won third prize in a painting competition organized by the National Brewery.

To Buenos Aires

In 1947 he moved to the College of Fine Arts Ernesto Carcova in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he studied and Jeanine, and Cebamanos Oduber.

“They wrote me saying, Sinclair, this is for us, come on over. I did not sleep thinking about that adventure, but had no money.”

To pay your ticket you sell your car for six hundred dollars for the rest of its expenses and something would happen.

I had a friend who worked at a travel agency and reveals her case and that of Jose Zabala. Each gave $ 200 and the friend left them in Santiago de Chile, “which was closer and accept.” Boarded a Hercules plane of post-war ship Albrook Fields and shared with “a few calves that came from Canada.”

They arrived in Santiago de Chile. Seven days later landed in Buenos Aires. Were addressed to Juan Bautista Jeanine, but it was midnight and the gate of his building was closed. “Then Zabala and I started playing pool until dawn.”

Both had to pass a rigorous entrance exam in Carcova. Approved.

When Sinclair ran out of funds has an idea to solve their financial problems. In Panama had managed their money in a way that is allowed to buy shoes and shirts of good-looking, began selling garments in Argentina to go their own cost.

At four months back on zero and seeking employment in a factory. “The world is small. You know who was the general manager Ivan Alfaro, son of the eminent statesman Ricardo J. Alfaro Panama. What you tell me that”.

His perfect English allows you to go climbing on the job.

“So to sweep the streets have to be smart. Since I know that several directors were British I spoke with an Oxford accent. I rose, I got a raise, but they were rotating shifts and went to school with a lot of sleep, but there do it. ”

Their efforts are bearing fruit, not only because the Ministry of Education of Argentina gives him and the rest of the Panamanians a scholarship to continue his studies (“Evita Peron itself provided us”) but also the distinctions obtained in Buenos Aires.

In 1948 he was awarded a Medal of stimulus in the Exhibition of Fine Arts Golden Jubilee Club Moron. In 1949 part of the XXVIII Annual Exhibition of Student and Alumni Association of Fine Arts and manages the fourth prize.

That same year, it earned the fifth spot in the Plastic Arts Exhibition of Twentieth Anniversary Los Heros.

Sinclair finished his training and wants to prove he was ready to conquer the art. “I wanted to pass through a filter to see how he was as a painter.”

The test was when the January 2, 1950 on his first solo exhibition at the Gallery Ant’u. “With so lucky, God is so great that a major Argentine art critic spoke so well of my work that I began to mourn.”

Back to Homeland

Alfredo Sinclair returns to his country in 1950. wears on his head the paintings of Matisse, Gauguin, Modigliani, Pollock and many other geniuses who had been engrossed in a group in Argentina. That contact him the idea of using crushed glass in his paintings.

“I had to get rid of the traditional painting of Panama. I made a new proposal. He put the box on the floor, when the oil was still fresh it sprinkled with colored glass neon and left him motionless for a week. My wife told him I was ponchi and she suffered greatly for that. ”

That same year she won an Honorable Mention in the National Painting Competition organized by four singles.

He married Olga Avila, September 13, 1953, who have three children: George, Olga and Miguel Angel. In 1955 it won first prize in painting competition with the work Ricardo Miro Mato Grosso, an informal table inlaid glass.

His work began to be known in the United States, France and Germany. In 1961 achieved an Honorable Mention in the Contest Central America and Panama, held in El Salvador and in 1969 he was awarded the highest distinction XEROX Competition.

Such work does not stop sharing her knowledge. Between 1960 and 1963 taught at the Albert Einstein Institute.

In 1963 he delivered two lectures at the School of Visual Arts. In 1972 a professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Panama and remains in that position until 1979 when he retires.

In 1986 he was named “Citizen of Panama Exemplary” by the Civic Club of this city. In 1990 participates in the Latin American Art auction at Christie’s in New York.

The Museum of Modern Art honored him with a retrospective in 1991, he received from the Government of Panama to him the Order Basque N’u~nez de Balboa. In 2000, he received the Excellence in the Arts Award by the MAC.

The Andres Bello Convention, in addition to Sinclair award for a few days ago, his daughter Olga invited to exhibit their works from 30 September to 29 October in the Centro Cultural de Bogota, to pay tribute to his father.

His works adorn the collections of the Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango in Bogota, the Institute of Fine Arts of Mexico, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Arts of the Americas in Washington, DC

Stylish

The critics lists Alfredo Sinclair as the first painter of his generation to explore abstract expressionism. Light works in collage and mixed media. His work has been tipped by a lyrical abstraction that makes use of bright colors.

Between the periods for which he spent his work can include figurative, abstraction, semi-abstract and his penchant for urban congestion as well as fruits, fish, insects and innocent faces.

His most important rule is that an artist must work from their emotions, “but it is important to control them because too much emotion blinds you. You pass them in a plastic reality.”

Sinclair believes that not only is remarkable to find your own style but also be a “social thermometer, the artists have to press the emotional temperature around us.”

Angels and shoots

A Sinclair loves to paint angelic beings. “Because I love children. I have 10 grandchildren.”

It all started when she saw a toddler in a position so still, as if half asleep. “That is a matter for a painting.

My kids always have a certain melancholy and that’s part of my personality, that’s me, everything affects me. ”

One of his favorite girl is his daughter Olga (Panama, 1957), which is now a leading painter and who on more than one occasion has shared exhibition with his father.

Alguita He warned, as he likes to call it, that “there is a part of art that is beautiful, but also involves many sacrifices. He spends working misunderstanding.”

When painted, Alguita got behind to see how he did it. “I gave her a blank notebook and gave him some crayons and let them paint whatever he wanted.”

Recommends that children not be taught to paint. “As the child can not reason like an adult can paint you what you want. If you’re drawing guides of your world and you can do psychological harm. We should not buy those books that have pictures ready. They need to leaf white. I can propose even the subject, but not how. ”

Alfredo Sinclair waited patiently for Olga turned 12 years. Then he said, “Now go to work painting as an adult. I brought my study, I showed him everything I learned in Argentina.”

Once this stage, you should study in the School of Applied Arts and Crafts in Madrid, Spain.

Francisco