Picture in Focus: Felicidades by Eduardo Vera Cortes

January 6, 2023

Picture in Focus: Felicidades by Eduardo Vera Cortes

Happy New Year! My first art offering in 2023 closes out the holiday season with a poster from Puerto Rico celebrating the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child. The Three Kings play a prominant role in New Year festivities in the Hispanic world, since gifts are traditionally given on January 6th, El Dia des Reyes (The Day of the Kings). The trio appear in a psychedelic vision in stained glass in a serigraph from 1966 by Eduardo Vera Cortes. He belonged to "The Fifities Generation" of Puerto Rican art makers, famed for their silk screen prints publicizing cultural events sponsored by the Community Education Division (DIVEDCO) of the Department of Education, which enlisted leading artists from 1949 until 1986 to create public art in a progressive style, influenced by the New Deal art projects of President Franklin Roosevelt. This resplendent poster of the Magi joins others of the Three Kings on the Puerto Rican Serigraphs page in the Schools of Sacred Art section. (John Kohan)