Boricua Fame & Bomba Negra

Boricua Fame & Bomba Negra

By Martin Soto | March, 2014

Painter Martin Soto’s work celebrated the dance of life—transformations, the rhythm of our beating hearts and breaths, and the all-embracing energy of cosmic cycles of inspiration. His pieces touched on the presence of African aesthetics in contemporary western art and spoke to the vibrancy of Puerto Rican culture. Soto’s work has been exhibited internationally and incorporates themes of life and dreams, blues and hope, beats and pauses, contractions and releases. In his glowing review of Soto’s Boricua Fame & Bomba Negra collection, artist and curator Edward Maldonado notes that these pieces “have taken a more personal and introspective direction,” citing that “the works utilize fluidity of paint and immediacy of drawing to gesture the flow of waters, volcanic eruptions, and lava flows - movements directed from the inner to the outer, as if natural ruptures are now evidence of the artist’s current psychic state.”