El Salvador | Fernando Llort’s sweet tooth

13 Dec 2015
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2 min read
FOUR looks at the famous artwork of Salvadorian artist, Fernando Llort, as well as his penchant for a sweet treat…
Salvadorian icon

The artwork of Fernando Llort is a distinctive Salvadorian icon, everything began in 1970 when he decided to reside in the beautiful town of La Palma, Chalatenango, a town where tranquility and peace can be easily found here he founded a crafts center that gave rise to the so called “palmeño style.”

The story says that one day, when he was walking aroun town, he saw a little kid playing with a copinol seed. The seed of the surface was white and hard, perfect to create a craft from it. He soon founded “Gods Seed” a school and workshop that works with wooden crafts. With the first craftsmen from La Palma, he started to work and create art with the copinol seed and pine Wood, drawing on the Surface with tempera Paint. Because of the success of his art crafts demand was high so, he increased the number of employees at the workshop which was then in 1977.

In 1985, the cultural center named “Gods three” opened its doors in the capital city of San Salvador, where a variaty of La Palma crafstmen continued their training. the center also had an exhibition room, craftshop and a space to give seminars and concerts.

In this decade, the work of Llort already was a sympbol of Salvadorian identity, specially of La Palma. This type of recognition gave him the honor of building ritual objects – such as the stool used by Pope John Paul II in 1983 to officiate the mass in San Salvador city. Since then he’s been working on different ornaments for buildings around the capital of San Salvador one of those decorations was done at the “Blessed Romero” Chapel, located inside the University José Simeón Cañas in 1985.

Fernando Llort’s work has influences both modern and pop art. Nevertheless, he impregnates the traditional culture with precolumbian and pre-renaissance overtones and has blended it in his own way the ethnic, local and religuos aspects from El Salvador, idealizing the world, similar to the community he must have imagined in La Palma. His work doesn’t acknowledgebarriers between the educated art and the popular one, instead the social function, the tuition and the human benefit have been prioritised.

When visiting El Salvador we recommend you enjoy Fernando Llorts art with traditional desserts and aromatic coffee. Fernando Llort’s favorite dessert is “semita pacha” a (thin semite, a famous sweet bread cooked in every salvadorean bakery, semitas can be done with pineapple or guava jam, You can also delite yourself with a tasty and warm piece of quesadilla, quesadillas in El Salvador are cheese based sweet bread very delicious, another recommended traditional dessert would be nuégados accompanied with chilate. All of these traditional desserts can be sided with a cup of Salvadorian gourmet hot coffee.

Come to El Salvador and meet our art, our culture and the sweetness of our people and desserts.