Since the late 1950s, together with Brazil’s Marcelo Grassman and Mexico’s José Luis Cuevas, Julio Zachrisson has been one of a handful of Latin American artists exclusively dedicated to drawing and printmaking as his primary mediums of expression. The influence of Goya’s prints and drawings, as well as German symbolism and expressionism profoundly affected Zachrisson’s work. His style fused satire, social content, and erotic fantasy into one of the most consistent graphic vocabularies to develop in the Americas. La guapachosa is an example of the Panamanian artist’s mature drawing with its rigorous technique and irreverent vision. The title refers to a woman who loves to guapachear–be a “party girl,” “a woman about town.” She is the larger figure on the right of the composition; her face is reduced to sleepy eyes and a large and sensual mouth revealing grinning teeth. Running behind her–the smaller figure to the left of the composition–is a grotesque little man with an enormous turban. His skeletal arm with tiny fingers reaches out to her, while his nose and tongue also protrude towards her. A lone small finger sticks out from the figure’s belly. Both figures exist in a bare, stage-like setting; pale gray ground and darker gray background. The washes of gray and black delicately fill the intricately drawn and stylized parts of both bodies. Zachrisson’s drawing is a quirky commentary on traditional gender roles, in which an objectified female is still a force of nature and a pursuant male (from a Latin and machista culture) is a figure of ridicule.
Julio Zachrisson was born in Panama in 1930. In the late 1940s he began his art studies at the Instituto Nacional, working under painter Juan Manuel Cedeño. In 1952 he left Panama for Mexico with fellow artist Gilberto Maldonado Thibault, visiting Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala on the way. During this sojourn Zachrisson not only filled several sketchbooks with impressions, he also became keenly aware of the injustice and poverty of the region. In early 1953 he arrived in Mexico City, attending La Esmeralda, Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado. At this time Zachrisson met the artists José Luis Cuevas, Alberto Gironella, and Pedro and Rafael Coronel who shared a rejection of Mexican mural painting while being committed to a more expressive figuration. At the invitation of printmaker García Bustos, Zachrisson attended the Taller de Gráfica Popular and made prints in the workshop. Always interested in literature and philosophy, while in Mexico City he befriended exiled Spanish intellectuals, including the painter Remedios Varo. In 1954 Zachrisson met the painter Juan Soriano, who had just returned from Europe, and the Mexican introduced the Panamanian to the Tauromaquia prints of Goya. In 1959 he traveled to Europe for the first time where he studied at the Pietro Vannucci Art Academy in Perugia; visited Holland, Germany, and France; and arrived in Spain in 1961, where he began an intense study of Goya’s work at the Museo del Prado. He matriculated as an “alumno libre” at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando to utilize the etching and lithography presses there. In the early 1960s he settled in Madrid, married Marisé Torrente Malvido, and continues to live and work there. In 1976 after more than twenty- five years of working exclusively in drawing and printmaking, Zachrisson returned to painting. He received the Aragón-Goya Award for printmaking in 1996. In the summer of 2015 the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá presented a retrospective of his prints.
