Village Mural Project: About The Artist,
Julia Aguirre

Operation USA commissioned Nicaraguan muralist, Julia Aguirre, to paint a mural on Santa Rosa's village library. Ms. Aguirre, self- taught, began painting in 1973. Her husband, also a painter, was killed fighting against the dictatorship of Somoza in the 1980's. A Primitivist in style, whose specialty is the life of Nicaraguan women, she has exhibited all over the world. Today, she is President of the Nicaraguan Painters Union and works primarily in rural villages.

Ms. Aguirre first achieved prominence as a Muralist during the "Nicaraguan Mural Renaissance" of the 1980's, when national and international mural brigades spread throughout the country depicting images representing themes of literacy, health, children and family. "Blackboards of the people" - these murals provided a forum for empowerment and self-reliance.

This period ended in the early 1990's, when the Sandinista government lost power and Arnoldo Aleman - the rightist Mayor of Managua who became President of Nicaragua - began the process of obliterating most of these great works. Ms. Aguirre was among the artists whose paintings were erased but thanks to the careful work of art historian David Kunzle, in his book "The Murals of Revolutionary Nicaragua", a record of many of the lost murals exists. Ms. Aguirre's work is featured in this important study.

"To erase the murals is to try to erase the beauty, the flights of fancy and magic released by liberation and utopic dreams of our people"

- Julio Valle - Poet