Obituario Fernando Montes

August 14, 1930 - January 17, 2007

The Bolivian painter Fernando Montes, who lived in London, is known for his gentle, mysterious earth-toned South American landscapes and his Henry-Moore-like figures of the Andean people, silent and still.

He returned to Bolivia regularly, taking in the Inca ruins, snow-capped mountains and the bright, high-altitude skies. His work — which reflected his philosophical and spiritual temperament — evolved over four decades in conjunction with his travels in South America, Europe and the Far East.

He was born in La Paz, the son of a prominent lawyer and politician who at the time of his death was leader of the Bolivian Liberal Party. His earliest memories were of the intensely-coloured sky where Venus can be seen in winter, the towering Mount Illimani and the long rim of the high plateau that leads to Lake Titicaca and Peru.

When he was 12 his family moved to Buenos Aires, and he started at Modelo School. By the age of 15 he knew that painting was his vocation, and obtained extra tuition from Vicente Puig, the best-known artist and teacher in Latin America.

After graduating in philosophy from San Andrez University in La Paz he joined Jorge Ruiz and Augusto Roca, who were making the first Bolivian films. They journeyed to the high plateau and down to the rain forest, where Montes sketched the Indian tribe for a later series of paintings. Two years later he left the film world for ever, to paint professionally. He made portraits, nudes and landscapes, and his first exhibition was in the La Paz municipal gallery.

In 1959 the Bolivian government awarded him a scholarship to study at the San Fernando fine art school in Madrid, the equivalent of Britain's Royal Academy. Afterwards he went to London, intending to stay a fortnight. Here he met up with Marcela Villegas, whom he had known in Bolivia. She had come to London as a tourist, liked it, and stayed, working as secretary to the Colombian ambassador.

Montes fell in love with Marcela — whom he married in 1960 — and with London, which he liked for its cultural and artistic life, and for the way it offered him privacy. He did a further course at St Martin’s School of Art and, in 1965, had his first London exhibition there.

He achieved major recognition in 1973 when he was invited to contribute to an exhibition of Bolivian contemporary painters at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

In 1982 he was invited to Japan, where he met the Zen Buddhist aesthetic of shibui, a view of beauty that consists of tranquillity, simplicity, space and silence, which blended with his own. Five years later he visited the ruins of Machu Picchu. The paintings that resulted were exhibited in Venice, Florence, Rapallo and Rome, and led to his election to the Accademia Archeologica Italiano in Rome in 1993.

In 1993, shortly after presenting a painting to the National Museum in La Paz, he travelled as a pilgrim along the Inca trail to the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca. The resulting paintings were exhibited in Paris with the tiles Les Andes Sacrees in 1996. Three years later he represented Bolivian at the Venice Biennale.

In all he had 37 one-man shows and 30 joint shows. His last major exhibition was Spirit of the Andes, a retrospective at the Mall Galleries in April 2006.

He is survived by his wife and by a son and daughter.

Fernando Montes, artist, was born on August 14, 1930. He died on January 17, 2007, aged 76

Fernando Montes

Artist whose travels influenced his work and reflected his spiritual temperament