Etchings of a vivid memory.

• Author: Montero P., C. Guillermo

"Life goes on, as life does, but with the gnawing sensation of having lost part of one's identity and all of the past." These are the words of Juan Bernal Ponce, who, like many other artists, has taken up residence in San Jose, Costa Rica, where he constantly invokes Valparaiso, the city of his youth.

Born in this Chilean port in 1938, Bernal Ponce enrolled in Taller 99 (Studio 99) of the Universidad Catolica of Santiago, Chile, in 1961. The Taller was founded by Nemesio Antunez in emulation of the studio which the English artist William Stanley Hayter set up on his country estate on the Seine. Its members were noted for their spirit of experimentation, exploration of alternative mediums, and investigation of new techniques. As a young man, Bernal Ponce left Santiago for Paris, where he became a student of Hayter's at the Academic Ranson and also enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux Arts.

Now age fifty-four, Bernal Ponce gives a detailed account of his life. He arrived in San Jose on February 4, 1974, thus commencing the stage he calls "exile." It is common knowledge that artists never know themselves so well as when they become separated from surroundings they love. The works from this period, which evoke the printmaker's personal history and love of urban crowds, clearly demonstrate that he is still centered in Chile. The artist's constructivist approach--geometric compositions and pyramidally clustered houses--is reminiscent of the Uruguayan master Torres-Garcia. The baroque quality of much of Bernal Ponce's work is rooted in the exuberance of the artist's childhood and the variety of his interests. Ancedotal in character, it reflects a sensitivity to a thousand details which cannot be reduced to generalities. Little remains today of Bernal Ponce's surrealistic printmaking of the sixties, but etching and aquatint are still his favorite media.

During the seventies printmaking acquired special importance in Costa Rica. Classes in the subject were included in the curriculum of the University of Costa Rica, where the CREAGRAF project was sponsored by the Organization of American States. The School of Architecture was founded on the premise that fine arts were to be considered a complementary and integral part of its curricula. Where printmaking was concerned, this led to the emergence of two leading figures: Juan Luis Rodriguez at Bellas Artes, the university's fine arts department, and Juan Bernal Ponce at the architecture school.

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