From 9 February to 25 March 2021
Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, 27 rue de Seine, Paris 6e
In 1952 he gave up his law studies to devote himself entirely to painting.
In Mexico, in 1959, he met the painter José Luis Cuevas, and together they set out on a long journey to the sources of Maya culture.
Camacho arrived in Paris in 1959, where he found his friends again: the sculptor Agustín Cárdenas, who introduced him to André Breton in 1961, and the painter Joaquín Ferrer. He very quickly joined the Surrealist group. “The one who sets traps”, as Breton called him in 1964, would remain faithful to his early commitments.
Jorge Camacho’s pictorial space explores tortured worlds, in which the most sophisticated esotericism rubs shoulders with a surprising shamanism. Beyond these markers, Jorge Camacho’s paintings express a poetic universe, in the refined light of a tawny palette.
Writing, photography and music (he loved jazz and flamenco), as well as his passion for alchemy, the occult and ornithology, are decisive complements to his work as a painter.
He notably illustrated the poetic works of Jean-Pierre Duprey, Gilbert Lely, Guy Cabanel, Joyce Mansour and Claude Tarnaud.
He translated poems by the Haitian poet Magloire Saint-Aude from Spanish into French.
Jorge Camacho lived and worked between Paris and Andalusia from 1975.
Todo el mundo habla de surrealismo, pero son muy pocos los que lo comprenden (“Everyone talks about Surrealism, but very few understand it”), Jorge Camacho.
Exhibitions
Some important solo exhibitions in Camacho’s career
In 1962 his second solo exhibition at the Galerie Daniel Cordier was entitled “L’Immaculée Conception des papes”. It drew on the fiercely anticlerical work of the German writer Oskar Panizza and was organised with the support of the Surrealist group.
In 1967 the work of Raymond Roussel inspired the exhibition “HARR” at the Galerie Mathias Fels, as well as a collection of poems, L’Arbre acide.
Another landmark exhibition: “Le Ton haut”, in 1969, inspired by traditional alchemy, which René Alleau and Eugène Canseliet had brought back into favour in Surrealist circles. Alchemy also inspired an exhibition at the Galerie de Seine in 1975, “La Danse de la mort”, with a preface by René Alleau himself, as well as an original hermetic treatise conceived with Alain Gruger, Héraldique alchimique nouvelle, published in 1978 (by éditions du Soleil noir).
Artist: Jorge Camacho