Art

Licry Bicard (El Salvador, 1944) is a distinguished Salvadoran artist whose work spans painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. Between 1972 and 1979 she trained under renowned masters José Sánchez Carralero, Valero Lecha, and Benjamín Saúl, cultivating the technical depth and expressive sensibility that define her practice. Across decades of creative work, Bicard has built a rich and varied body of art rooted in Salvadoran identity and the broader Latin American tradition. In 1994 she founded her own art conservation studio alongside Roberto Arce, dedicating herself not only to creating art but to preserving it for future generations. Her work has been exhibited extensively and forms part of both national and international collections — a testament to its enduring resonance. In 2004, the Legislative National Assembly of El Salvador honored Licry Bicard as Painter of Merit, recognizing a lifetime of artistic excellence and her lasting contribution to the cultural heritage of El Salvador.

Hugo Martínez Acuña is a Salvadoran visual artist and painter based in San Salvador, whose vivid, densely woven canvases turn the tropical world of El Salvador into teeming gardens of birds, flowers, and butterflies. A former Fulbright scholar (1988–1991), he holds a Master of Art in Digital Design and Illustration from San Diego State University, and trained in drawing and painting at the Art Student League of New York and in illustration in San Diego. Alongside his studio practice he has been a leading figure in Salvadoran design education — directing the School of Design at Universidad Don Bosco and coordinating the Graphic Arts area at the Escuela de Artes Aplicadas of Universidad Dr. José Matías Delgado. For Martínez Acuña, painting is a personal and subjective act — an attempt to bridge the present with images built in the past, drawn to places and events that carry a special energy. He understands art as critical thought clothed in human, social, and historical values: work meant to make the viewer think, not merely to decorate. His paintings have been exhibited across El Salvador and internationally — in the United States, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Spain, Argentina, and Canada — and he continues to create from his studio in San Salvador.

Gilda Pontbriand is a painter based in Ottawa, Canada, whose art is rooted in the years she lived in Mexico — the time that, in her words, gave structure to her life and set the basis for her work. Moving fluidly between abstraction and figuration, she paints in oil, on silk, and in monoprint, and also works in photography. Color is her essential element: strong, confident drawing wrapped in an ethereal softness, compositions that stay simple and elegant while carrying a deep charge of feeling. For Pontbriand, painting is a constant search with a spiritual dimension — a movement between the mundane and a magical world. She organizes her work into series drawn from her environment, her dreams, and her inner world, inviting the viewer to read the emotion behind each piece rather than any literal scene. Her "Mirage" series — with works such as Ellarbol, Mujarbol, Nirvana, and Nenufemme — fuses the female figure with trees, water, and light into dreamlike, almost mythic images. Her broader body of work ranges from floral studies and Mayan glyphs to portraiture and pure abstraction.