Fernando Llort

Excerpts from a wide-ranging conversation about renowned Salvadoran artist Fernando Llort and art in the country, undertaken with Orlando Delcid, candidate for the upcoming 2027 presidential elections in El Salvador.

Fernando Llort (1949–2018) was a pioneering Salvadoran painter, ceramicist, and muralist. His most enduring legacy began when he settled in the mountain town of La Palma, where he founded a local cooperative teaching campesinos and their families to paint and carve on wood and seed pods. What started as a workshop for art and traditional crafts grew into an important economic pillar for the local community.

AISM: What’s your sense of the importance of artist Fernando Llort, to El Salvador and beyond?

Art and culture tell us a lot about who we are as a country, where we come from and also how we present ourselves to the rest of the world. Consequently, Fernando Llort is incredibly important to El Salvador because he did something that very few artists accomplish — he didn’t simply create art, but helped create a visual language that became recognisable as Salvadoran. When you look at his work — the color; the birds; the houses; the sun; the people; the landscape — there’s something about it that feels like El Salvador. But what I find particularly important about his story is what happened in La Palma. Rather than his work being confined to his gallery, it became a place that other people could participate. Artists learned, families became involved, and art became connected to employment, which is so important, to entrepreneurship and the local economy. And I think there’s something very important in that, because culture doesn’t have to be something which we simply preserve and look back upon, culture can be alive, it can generate opportunity, and it can give people a sense of pride in where they come from.

Fernando Llort demonstrated how art, identity and community and economic opportunity can really come together. El Salvador has tremendous cultural potential, internationally, which we haven’t fully developed yet. Because we are a small country, we have to become exceptionally good at telling people who we are. When people think about certain countries, immediately something comes to mind. It may be their food, their music, their architecture. Those things may seem separate to diplomacy, but they’re really not. Those things influence how people feel about a country, and that’s soft power.

I think that El Salvador has a real opportunity here. I believe, for instance, that our embassies should not only represent the government but also become platforms for representing the El Salvadoran people and culture. You would bring our art, our literature, our artisans into those embassies, and allow an overseas audience to experience who we are, and leave wanting to know more about the country. And that’s powerful, because eventually that interest becomes tourism, becomes trade, it can become investment, it can become relationships between institutions and people.

Fernando Llort and his Artwork.

AISM: What other Salvadoran artists should people be aware of?

Noé Canjura would be one. Rosa Mena Valenzuela would be another. I can also think about Carlos Cañas in this context. Also Benjamín Cañas. There are many others. But just as important: who is the next Fernando Llort? Who is the next great Salvadoran painter, filmmaker, musician, writer or designer who is sitting in El Salvador right now, creating extraordinary work, but who as yet doesn’t have access to international platforms? That’s what interests me, because I don’t want Salvadoran artists to have to become successful somewhere else before we recognize how talented they are. We should have mechanisms inside of El Salvador to discover that talent, develop it, showcase it, then take it to the world.

AISM: How does art and culture fit within your vision for the country?

For me, culture isn’t an afterthought, and I don’t see culture simply as entertainment or as another category of government spending. I see culture in at least 3 ways: Identity, education and economic opportunity. 

Firstly, I want Salvadoran children to know where they come from. They should know Fernando Llort; they should know our artists, writers and musicians who have helped shape our national culture, because there is something very powerful about a young person being able to say: “These came from my country. These are my people. This is part of my history.”

Secondly, as regards education, we need to think more broadly about education. Not every child is going to become a doctor, is going to become an engineer or an attorney. Someone may be an extraordinary musician, a filmmaker, another may be a graphic designer or an architect, and another may be a painter. We shouldn’t lose those people simply because we don’t create a pathway for their talent.

And thirdly, around the world, creative industries are real industries. So I want us to start thinking about a Salvadoran creative economy, and I think knowledge should be a part of that as well. We should be digitally preserving important pieces of Salvadoran history, art, literature, music and other cultural materials, so that future generations have access to it. I also want culture to become part of our diplomacy, and our tourism strategy. And the way we promote El Salvador around the world. The words would be ‘cultural diplomacy.’ I want El Salvador to practice cultural diplomacy much more intentionally. That’s how I look at this. Economic development and cultural development don’t have to compete with each other: we can do both.

"Día de la Cruz" ("Day of the Cross") by Fernando Llort.

"La Guerra Civil" ("The Civil War") by Rosa Mena Valenzuela.

Orlando Delcid, presidential candidate in the 2027 elections in El Salvador, who spoke exclusively to Art in San Miguel about Fernando Llort and El Salvadoran art.

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