Rafael Ángel "Felo" García Picado (30 July 1928 – 2 December 2023) was a Costa Rican painter, architect, and
footballer
A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby lea ...
.
García was one of Costa Rica's most outstanding art teachers and administrators in the late 20th century. His work as a promoter of Costa Rican culture earned him the nickname "El adelantado" ("The advanced").
Biography
Born in Paraíso de
Cartago, García started playing football at
Deportivo Saprissa
Deportivo Saprissa is a Costa Rican sports club, mostly known for its Association football, football team. The club is based in San Juan de Tibás, San José, Costa Rica, San José, and play their home games at the Estadio Ricardo Saprissa Aym ...
and later played for Club Sport La Libertad and
Herediano.
[‘Felo’ García es el Magón 2008]
- Nación
After a time in England, where he played for
Hendon
Hendon is an urban area in the London Borough of Barnet, northwest London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient Manorialism, manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has ...
to become the first Costa Rican footballer in England, he began his career as a professional football player in
Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
with Real Iberia.
García died on 2 December 2023, at the age of 95.
Falleció Rafael Ángel ‘Felo’ García, pintor y arquitecto costarricense, a los 95 años
Painting
There in 1948, he met Costa Rican artist Manuel de la Cruz González[El adelantado Felo García]
- Nación and he began to show his interest in painting as a form of expression. From Cuba, he went to Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
to continue playing soccer. In Colombia, he discovered the slums of Cali
Santiago de Cali (), or Cali, is the capital of the Valle del Cauca department, and the most populous city in southwest Colombia, with 2,280,522 residents estimate by National Administrative Department of Statistics, DANE in 2023. The city span ...
and Medellín
Medellín ( ; or ), officially the Special District of Science, Technology and Innovation of Medellín (), is the List of cities in Colombia, second-largest city in Colombia after Bogotá, and the capital of the department of Antioquia Departme ...
, a subject of interest for his first paintings. In 1951 he returned to Costa Rica where, in addition to football, he worked at the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation. With Teodorico Quirós, the architect and landscape painter, he began to paint with greater dedication.
In 1954, he returned to England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
to continue his studies. There, he found the answer to his artistic concerns in abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...
, a moment in which artists channelled their feelings into works emphasizing plastic elements such as colour, line, texture, and space, but not objective reality. He also formed, with other students in his university, the group New Vision (Nueva Visión) with the intention of painting, exchanging ideas, critiquing each other, and presenting their work in different locations.
In 1956 he returned to Costa Rica, where he found a stagnant art scene. In 1958 he opened the second abstract art exhibition in Costa Rica. Years later, the artist recalled the horrific impact that the works caused, and how the people had mocked them, saying that he did not know how to draw. Subsequently, he formed the group Ocho with other artists,[ promoting abstract art and performing various cultural activities to fill the existing gaps. In this 1958 exhibition, he presented works related to abstract expression and ''matérica'' (material) painting, which used non-traditional materials such as sand, sawdust, and plaster. At the same time, he began to develop calligraphic abstraction and his own gestural "action painting," in which he explored the theme of the big city with its skyscrapers and crowded buildings.
His continued experimentation led him to work with materials like burned resin, as in his ''Galaxy'' (1963). He also created works with waste materials like nuts, sheet metal, and wood. With his momentum, the General Department of Arts and Letters (Dirección General de Artes y Letras) was created in 1963, with him as the first director. Thanks to his tireless work at the head of the institution, cultural activities in the country expanded, reaching almost the entire national territory. He began to paint scenes of slums, showing his interest in urbanism, which was linked to his training as an architect and urban planner. His central theme was the slums with houses constructed of poor materials such as cardboard, tin, or wood. In these works, there are no human figures, but their presence is felt through the presence of hanging clothes, electric cables, and lights. These paintings were not intended as a social protest; rather, the issue of poor housing was for him aesthetically appealing.
His dream of creating the School of Architecture at the ]University of Costa Rica
The University of Costa Rica (Spanish: ''Universidad de Costa Rica,'' abbreviated UCR) is a public university in the Republic of Costa Rica, in Central America. Its main campus, Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio, is located in San Pedro Mo ...
was finally achieved in 1971; he was its first director. One highlight of his tenure was the research project "Bamboo, an alternative to development," which intended to provide solutions to solve the problems of low-income housing.
Magón
García won the 2008 Magón National Prize for Culture, the highest cultural award that can be given to a Costa Rican artist by the Costa Rican government.[
]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Garcia, Felo
1928 births
2023 deaths
People from Cartago Province
Costa Rican painters
Costa Rican architects
Costa Rican men's footballers
Hendon F.C. players
Deportivo Saprissa players
C.S. Herediano footballers
Costa Rican expatriate men's footballers
Expatriate men's footballers in England
Men's association football players not categorized by position
Costa Rican expatriate sportspeople in England
Costa Rican expatriates in Cuba