Santos de la Torre

When he was young, Santos de la Torre lived in extreme poverty. On his conversations with Mexican writer Fernando Alarriba, he described his first experience with Hikuri (peyote), where he found a mystic reality that he gradually understood with the help of his father, a Mara'akame (Huichol Chaman) that guided him in the interpretation of his visions and dreams.

His artistic career started at 23 years old, right at the top moment of Huichol contemporary art portrayed globally by artists like José Benítez Sánchez and Tutukila Carrillo Sandoval. His brother, Jesus, asked him to travel to Mexico City to sell arts and crafts and learn basic techniques of Huichol art crafting. It was in Mexico City where young Santos learned Spanish and began the creation of works based on personal designs. In 1968 he met John C. Lilly and his wife Colette, who were mesmerized by his work. They bought his first works and asked him for more information about the enigmatic Huichol culture. Santos agreed to take them to the community of Santa Catarina, where the couple made a crucial documentary task for expanding and protecting Huichol culture internationally at the top of the psicodelia culture.

With Lilly's protection, the artist met architect Eduardo Terrazas who invited him to collaborate with team of Huichol artists that took part on creating an identity logo for the 1968 Summer Olympics. His collaboration continued for various years and it allowed him to take part in contemporary art projects like Tablas, which took places at Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1972, in which Terrazas made a visual exploration of geometric structures inspired on Huichol art. At the end of the 70's he made a series of woodblocks with yarn, symbol of the SAHOP under the leadoff architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez.

Santos de la Torre's life in Mexico City allowed him observe the enormous value of the art of his ethnic group, nationally and internationally. However, he came into a big leap of uncertainty and repulsion due to the exploitation towards Huichol artists and craftsmen that took him to isolate at the heart of Jalisco's Sierra and stop creating art for almost 10 years.

After a great deal of time working in the fields, Santos started looking for new ways of expressions, leading him to create new artworks. These groundbreaking works of his demonstrated a deep experience when it came to the myths, Gods, ancestors, and principles that created the Huichol cosmogony. This is how he and his family created Sonido de Musico, composed by 100 pieces of 15 x 15 cm that would become the mark of murals that made his career on a global level. In 1993 he obtained resources from the Programa de Fomento a Proyectos y Coinversiones Culturales del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes with his work Misterio y viaje de los tres espíritus sagrados.

After this work came Pensamiento y alma Huichol (1997) located at the Palais-Royal Musée du Louvre station in Paris; Visión de un mundo místico (2001) located at Museo Zacatecano; El nuevo amanecer (2003) which belongs to the “Folk art" collection at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago; Eco de la montaña (Echo of the Mountain) (2014), centerpiece of Nicolas Echavarria's documentary, and Diosa madre del caballo, Xotori K`kyari^[1] (2016), at the Hotel Playa Tierra Tropical located in San Francisco, Rivera Nayarit.

In 2016 he exhibited his work in Mazatlán, which seek establishing a dialog between the Huichol people and the Haida people, from Canada, through art. He has also shown his work in Zacatecas and Mexico City.

In 2017, the Congress of the State of Jalisco gave him the Order “José Clemente Orozco"^[2] for his distinguished work in the painting field. Nowadays, Santos de la Torre continues creating arts at small, medium and grand format, and also maintains, along his family, a crafts workshop.