Pictures in Focus: Two Serigraphs of the Virgin of Monserrat by Lorenzo Homar and Sixto Cotto

May 20, 2018

Pictures in Focus: Two Serigraphs of the Virgin of Monserrat by Lorenzo Homar and Sixto Cotto

 In my series for the month of May on new Marian images in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, we travel east from Mexico to Puerto Rico this week to view two serigraphs by Puerto Rican graphic artists showing the Virgin of Monserrat, one of the most popular themes of the island's saint-making wood carvers. This manifestation of the Mother of Christ appeared in 1599 to a landowner, threatened by a bull in in the Western Puerto Rican town of Hormigueros, now the site of a pilgrimage shrine. Master Printmaker Lorenzo Homar features a carving of the Monserrat Madonna by Early 20th Century Saint-Maker Pedro Arce in a 1971 poster (left) with the exhibition program for San Juan's Santos Museum. Sixto Cotto, representing a younger generation of serigraph artists, presents another santos of the the Virgin against the backdrop of the Hormigueros basilica in a print promoting a 1982 popular arts competition. The two new posters can be viewed in the gallery of the Puerto Rican Serigraphs page in the Schools of Sacred Art section. (John Kohan)