Myrna Báez

Myrna Báez (born August 18, 1931 – September 24, 2018) was a Puerto Rican painter and printmaker, considered one of the most important visual artists in Puerto Rico.

She has been instrumental in promoting art and art education in her country.

Her work has been shown and collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Her work has been characterized as confident and complex.

She lived and worked in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Báez was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, to an upper-middle-class family and was one of five children.

Her father, Enrique Báez was a civil engineer and her mother, America Gonzalez was a teacher and an independent and confident woman.

Báez was strongly influenced by her mother.

Her mother insisted that all of her children take classes in the arts and she exposed them to the theater and reading.

Báez started painting classes at age nine.

Báez was described as an intelligent and gifted child.

She graduated from the Colegio Puertorriqueno de Niñas in 1947.

Báez received a bachelor's degree in the sciences from the University of Puerto Rico in 1951.

She was exposed to many cultural and artistic movements while at the University.

There had been a migration of many Spanish intellectuals and artists to Puerto Rico at the time and many of them were active around the University.

She began to develop ideas about issues surrounding Puerto Rican independence.

She believed that Puerto Rico should be an independent country.

Báez attended political rallies and cultural events.

Báez supported the woman's rights movement and identifies as a feminist.

Báez left for Spain, initially to study medicine but ended up completing studies on painting at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid.

Before she arrived in Spain, she spent time in New York and Paris, immersing herself in the culture of both cities.

In 1952, her passion for the arts led her to leave medical studies and pursue painting.

She applied at the San Fernando Art Academy and was rejected, but she worked hard to build up her portfolio and was accepted in 1953.

She received her master's degree in art from San Fernando Art Academy in 1957.

Afterwards, she returned to Puerto Rico to study with graphic artist Lorenzo Homar at the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in San Juan.

Báez's career started in 1957.

Much of Báez's early art works, created during the 1960s, are described as "traditional images of Puerto Rico."

During her earlier period of work, she often portrayed images of "everyday life" for "Puerto Rico's working-class people."

She began to use more printmaking techniques, such as engraving and woodcuts.

She later studied lithography and intaglio techniques with Dimitri Papagiourgi in Spain.

She became influenced by impressionism, surrealism and abstract art, incorporating many of these aspects into her work.

She was a teacher of painting and drawing at schools in Puerto Rico between 1962 and 1987.

Later, she studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1969 to 1970.

Báez became interested in working with collotypes in the 1970s.

From 1981 to 1987 she taught at the Art Students League in San Juan.

Báez paints in both oil and acrylic.

Báez's paintings are "softly painted" and "luminous."

Her prints, especially her collotypes, are "rich" in texture and color.

She died on September 24, 2018, following a heart attack, while in convalescence for a lung infection at Auxilio Mutuo Hospital, in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico.

Her family had her remains cremated.