Julio Micheli
"Abracadabra" (1980)
"Abracadabra" (1980)
Painter, graphic artist and designer, draftsman, assemblage artist, ceramicist, teacher, entomologist. Micheli studied electrical engineering at the Mayagüez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico and at the University of Miami, where he also studied commercial art (1962). He completed his MFA with a major in painting at Claremont Graduate University in California in 1965. On his return to the island that same year and through the late nineties he taught in the Department of Fine Arts at the Catholic University of Puerto Rico in Ponce. His entomological research has led him to discover several tropical species that now bear his name. He is currently dedicated to his career in art, which spans several media—watercolor, silkscreen, oil painting, acrylic on large-scale canvases, and constructions (for example, his well-known series Cajas/Boxes). Micheli’s work is Abstract Expressionist, with an enigmatic eroticism and a Dadaist/ Surrealist spirit, and conveys his desire to equate “personal expression” with the “essence of the medium.”