Pedro Figari

Prior to embarking on his artistic career, Uruguayan painter Pedro Figari (1861-1938) also worked as an attorney, a writer, and a politician. Shortly after deciding to pursue art full time (at the age of 60), Figari moved to Paris and encountered the work of French post-impressionist painters Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard. Many scholars cite Bonnard and Vuillard as Figari’s primary technical references due to their shared simplification of forms and figures, loose handling of paint, and textured surfaces. Different from his French colleagues, however, Figari did not paint the cloistered, hushed lifestyles of the European bourgeoisie but instead derived his subject matter from personal memories of his childhood in Uruguay.