Jorge Blanco is a Uriganian painter. I saw two small paintings of his at the Arron Gallery off DuPont Circle in Washington D.C. around November 2002. Earlier he had a show at the Uruguayan Embassy, which I unfortunately missed.

There was not much in the Arron Gallery that I liked. Mostly they were small Russian absract water colors that would have a hard time passing the "could a six-year-old do this?" test (very Rothko-ish). But I was drawn to two very small paintings; they were less than a sqaure foot each. They were geometrical abstactions with sharp lines and good colors. They had a sense of movement. They had an interesting texture, but it was not from brush strokes. I am not sure how the paint was applied.

The gallery did not have information cards up, so I asked about them. They were $450 each. But more than that was hard to learn. I later e-mailed the Arron Gallery more detailed questions, after I had studied Blanco a bit on the web, but they never wrote back.

A concern I had about one of the two has that when I looked close but from the side, almost edge on, I could see that the canvas was wavy. Is that bad? Is it a defect? Was it stored improperly at some time. Will the paint start to peel off should I buy it? Anyone out there know?

Next time I am in D.C. I'll have to see if the Embassy still has any of Blanco's work. Check out his website below.

Link: http://www.arteuy.com.uy/Blanco/blanco.htm

Note, Jorge Blanco is a common name: there is a Venezuelan sculptor and another painter who does tacky mermaids and the like, both with the same name.

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