Pedro Prado (1886–1952), the writer, architect, and painter, wrote a speech after the death of the painter Francisco González (1853–1933), who was recognized by his students, peers, and art historians as a great Chilean painting teacher. This document is an excerpt—published fourteen years later (1947) in Arte y Cultura magazine in Viña del Mar—from the speech that was read at the painter’s funeral on March 5.
Though González was widely recognized for his work as a painter, he was not immediately well received in art circles at the time; his style of painting was criticized, and he remained aloof from the teachings of the Escuela de Bellas Artes until 1910. That was the year he joined the school—under the direction of Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor—as he explained in an interview with the newspaper La Nación in 1929. Prior to that, he had worked as a drawing instructor at a high school. His persistent submissions to the official Salons and his controversial art columns in the newspapers eventually gained him the recognition of his peers. In 1915 he joined Los Diez (as Prado’s colleague and friend), a group whose members included writers, sculptors, painters, architects, and musicians who did not have a particular agenda but created a space for discussions about art and an opportunity to exhibit their works. Gaspar Galaz wrote: “Los pintores en el grupo de los Diez” [see the ICAA Digital Archive (doc. no. 765424)], in which he underscored the importance of González’s painting, describing it as “fragmented brushstrokes, like an autonomous entity” that ignored drawn lines and embraced color. It is interesting that his loose brushstrokes are the most representative aspect of his painting, since they could be viewed as an attempt to go beyond drawing which, however, was always an essential part of his work. In addition to his work as a teacher, he gave a lecture—“La enseñanza del dibujo”—in 1906, the text of which was published in the Annals of the Universidad de Chile. [To review other texts about the painter’s life and work, see: “Documentación sobre el hombre y el artista” (doc. no. 740266) by Isaías Cabezón and “Juan Francisco González” (doc. no. 740273) by Luis Lobo Parga.]