Jorge Blanco
Jorge Blanco (American born in Venezuela 1945) is an international artist who has created a distinctive sculptural language over more than forty years. His art values a positive lifestyle. Jorge creates soaring testaments to the optimism of everyday life. Jorge Blanco’s trademark subject is an abstracted figure that is at once recognizable and joyful. His numerous large format public art sculptures may be seen across the globe. In addition to public art, Blanco continues his life trajectory by making collectible sculptures.
Jorge has lived and worked in Sarasota, Florida since 1999 and has won many public art commissions in different cities in his adopted country. He has also created numerous works for private collectors in the United States and in different parts of the world.
With a degree (1971) in industrial design from the prestigious Neumann Institute of Design in Caracas, Venezuela, he learned to integrate industrial design with creative processes under the mentorship of instructors who were predominately artists. After graduation Blanco started his career as a sculptor, freelance graphic designer, and furniture designer. He also studied at Rome’s Academy of Fine Arts. During his stay in Europe, he discovered the world of cartoonists, which led him to create the most iconic comic strip in Venezuela’s history, “El Náufrago” (The Castaway). In 1980 it made its debut in El Diario de Caracas and was also published in Sarasota’s Citytempo (now SRQ Magazine) from 2000 to 2001 and the Observer for four years. Eight books have been published. For over thirty years, Jorge Blanco’s heartfelt vignettes offer scenes that celebrate philosophical whimsy and human imagination.
His accomplishments as an illustrator led him to a science, art and technology center, where he served as Creative Director for twenty years. During Blanco’s directorship at the science center, his sculptural work evolved from darker expressions on political ideologies and existentialist absurdity into bright and energetic dialogs supporting newfound values. Love, music, dance, sports and humor motivate Blanco’s widely known oeuvre.
Throughout his career, Jorge Blanco has designed purposefully. His work embraces scale, landscape, urbanism and technology. In a singular fashion, his art, with its striking colors and impressive scale, imbues the surrounding landscape, architecture, and social context with an unforgettable joyful aura. Look closely at his subtle and distinctly personal visual lexicon and you will spot the influence of Alexander Calder, Paul Klee and Joan Miro among others. Yet there is nothing derivative about his emblematic and geometric abstractions. They are a direct response and addition to each site.
Blanco’s largest body of work has been created and fabricated in the United States. He utilizes the best practices, processes, and fabrication standards for outdoor and smaller scale work and have increasingly high values in auction houses such as Sotheby’s, Christie’s & Phillips.