A Latin American in Paris: Cristóbal Rojas (1858–1890) between academicism and modernism

Abstract

As a Latin American artist living and working in Paris, Cristóbal Rojas (1858-1890) stood at the crossroads of many paths. His early artistic formation in Venezuela and his training at the Académie Julian in Paris instilled in him the academic artistic style visible in the works he submitted to the Salon between 1883 and 1890. However, it is not in his Salon works but rather in the paintings he did for himself that Rojas's significance and contribution to the history of art can be found. The increasingly Modernist works he painted for his personal artistic concerns reveal Rojas's valuable compromise between academicism and Modernism as well as his place as one of the first Latin American Modernist artists.