About the Artist
Mariano Hernandez
Mariano Hernandez (b. 1926 - ) is a Spanish painter born in Toledo whose work is characterized by bright colors and earth tones, and geometric abstraction, often mixing together partial abstracted shapes with animal and human body part forms to create inventive and playful hodgepodge beasts, as though mixing cubism with street art.
Mariano Hernandez spent his childhood in Argentina where his family arrived in 1930. He lived on the Rio de la Plata River, in Olivos (Buenos Aires). Eldest of a family of three children, he learned binding at age 14 to earn a living. At the same time, he worked as a librarian at the People's Library of Olivos. He started painting alone. Since 1962, Mariano Hernandez lives and works in Paris.
In 1967 he made a journey of several months: Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia to the borders of Vietnam and painted in contact with the local people.
