Person Page - 47377

     Germaine Anne Marie Clément was born in 1962.¹ She is the daughter of Paul G. E. Clément and Anne Mary Parker.¹

     Adelaide Clément was born in 1968.¹ She was the daughter of Paul G. E. Clément and Anne Mary Parker.¹ She died in 1968.¹

     Carlos Peñaranda Ribero was born on 5 October 1876 at La Paz, Bolivia^G.¹ He married Sara Minchin, daughter of John Birch Minchin and Lasternia del Pozo y Ferreira, on 28 February 1902 at La Paz, Murillo Provincia, La Paz, Bolivia^G.^1,2 He died on 2 January 1906 at age 29 at La Paz, Bolivia^G.³

     Juan Peñaranda Minchin was born on 14 June 1902 at Oruro, Bolivia^G.^1,2 He was the son of Carlos Peñaranda Ribero and Sara Minchin.³ He married Adela Adrián Ruiz.
     He was Diplomat; film-maker; author. He was educated Colegio San Calixto, La Paz; Instituto Inglés, Santiago de Chile.⁴

     Eloísa Peñaranda Minchin was born on 10 May 1903 at Murillo, La Paz, Bolivia^G.^1,2 She was the daughter of Carlos Peñaranda Ribero and Sara Minchin.³ She married Hugo Montes Y Montes.

     Guillermo Peñaranda Minchin was born in 1904 at Murillo, La Paz, Bolivia^G.^1,2 He was the son of Carlos Peñaranda Ribero and Sara Minchin.³ He died in 1932 at New York City, New York, U.S.A.^G.⁴

     Jorge Peñaranda Minchin was born on 18 October 1905 at Murillo, La Paz, Bolivia^G.¹ He was the son of Carlos Peñaranda Ribero and Sara Minchin.²

     Hugo Montes Y Montes married Eloísa Peñaranda Minchin, daughter of Carlos Peñaranda Ribero and Sara Minchin. He died on 18 June 1938 at Chulumani, Provincia de Sud Yungas, Bolivia.¹
     He was Lawyer; politician.

     Fernando Montes Peñaranda was born http://www.fernandomontes.co.uk/autobiography.html on 14 August 1930 at La Paz, Bolivia^G.¹ He was the son of Hugo Montes Y Montes and Eloísa Peñaranda Minchin.² He married Marcela Villegas Sánchez Bustamante on 23 December 1960 at London, England^G.¹ He died on 17 January 2007 at age 76 at London, England^G.³
     He was Artist. He was educated Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (La Paz); St Martin's School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts (London.) Hugo Montes autobiographical note, written in 1999 for his web site:

I was born in La Paz, Bolivia in 1930. My father, Hugo Montes, was a prominent lawyer and member of a family who had played a major role in the political life of the country from the late nineteenth century. At the time of his death my father was the leader of the Liberal Party in Bolivia. He married Eloisa Peñaranda Minchin and I was the third child.

La Paz is a city that nestles in a valley at 3600 metres above sea level. As a child, I remember seeing the extraordinary light of the high altitude and also the intense sky, as deep as an ocean, where in winter you can see Venus, even during the day. La Paz is surrounded by mountains; from the city on one side you can see, high up, the long rim of the High Plateau that leads to Lake Titicaca and, beyond it, to Peru. On the other side, the great snow covered Illimani towers above the city. The High Andes have magnificent snow peaks, some of them more than 6000 metres high.

One of the extraordinary experiences in my childhood was to go to Argentina by train. Then, as a little boy, I saw from the carriage window the strange and fantastic landscapes of the High Plateau, which we call the Altiplano, and also the Salar de Uyuni, a vast salt lake which stretches to the horizon like a sea of white. The train went through desolate areas of South America and climbed gradients, reaching an icy 5000 metres above sea level, to descend eventually to the mild climate of green valleys that were a delight to see. My child’s eyes experienced this magnificent geography at a very early age.

When I was 7 years old my father was killed in a car accident. We first went to live with my maternal grandmother, Sarah Minchin. Then, in 1942 we went as a family to live in Buenos Aires and there in the big city, which was at that time the most important cultural centre in South America, I began to study painting.

Aged 15, I tried to gain admission to the studio of Vicente Puig. I was told to return when I was 18, but I wanted to start immediately. My grandmother who was the relative who most encouraged my artistic vocation, went to speak to the master. He said that, because there was a nude model in the life class, they did not like to accept very young students. At that time Argentina was a very traditional society. My grandmother with a surprisingly liberal mind assured him that I had her permission and I was accepted.

I was lucky to study under Vicente Puig. He was a famous teacher in Buenos Aires. He was an exile from the Spanish Civil War, a contemporary of the great composer, Manuel de Falla, Jacinto Benavente and Margarita Xirgu; all had taken refuge in Argentina. Puig was a brilliant teacher and all his comments although sometimes cruel were of great depth, simple and intensely expressive, often with a metaphysical meaning. He revealed to me the importance and excellence of drawing and an understanding of the human figure: ‘a human head is a miracle’. With the years and maturity, I learned to appreciate even more his comments: ‘Master and student are on the same level in front of Nature’ ‘Art is an adventure’; ‘If you stab, stab to kill’, by which he meant that one had to be deliberate in the way one made marks on the paper.

When I finished school in Buenos Aires, I returned to the High Andes to study philosophy at the University of San Andrés in La Paz. In 1951 I joined a group of film makers. Jorge Ruiz, a childhood friend and Augusto Roca who were pioneers of the film industry in Bolivia. We journeyed to remote parts of the Altiplano and descended to the rain forest to 300 meters above sea level, where the Moseten tribe of indians lives. From the drawings I made during this trip I worked a series of paintings about this people.

After two years working in films, I took up painting professionally. I painted portraits, nudes and landscapes of the mountains and valleys around La Paz .

My first exhibition was in the Municipal Gallery in La Paz, at the time the only permanent gallery in the city. In this exhibition I showed portraits. Soon afterwards, I represented Bolivia at the 5th Sâo Paulo Biennial, Brazil.

At the same time the Spanish Government awarded me a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. It was quite an experience to have classes in this old and historic building, where Goya had studied. Now it is an art museum that includes in its collection a good number of excellent works by Goya There I met students with extraordinary talent. At that time San Fernando was a classical academy which offered a very rigorous training. It seems to have produced, perhaps by reaction, some of the most revolutionary artists. In Madrid I would go to the Prado Museum almost every day to see the magnificent collection, particularly of Spanish masters. In Spain I discovered the use of white as a colour.

When I finished my studies, in 1960, I came to London. Marcela Villegas Sanchez Bustamante, whom I had known from Bolivia, was at that time living in London. She became my wife six months later. We settled in London, during the Belle Epoch of the sixties, and I had my first one man exhibition outside Bolivia. The paintings were portraits, London cityscapes and paintings of people in London pubs. The pub paintings were a way of exploring inner London and human relationships in this environment. They gave me the chance to use the human figure, which has always fascinated me.

In 1965 we visited Bolivia with our son, Juan Enrique who was by then three years old. On this visit I was dazzled by the intense white light of the high altitude and again encountered the magnificent landscape of my childhood. On seeing the High Andes with the eyes of a mature person I found myself as an artist. The luminosity of the altitude and the cosmic landscape surrounded by snow covered mountains, reminded me of Von Keyserling’s comment when he arrived to La Paz and said that it was “the third day of creation “. I realised how fitting his reaction to the Andes was.

Within a year, I started to work on a series of paintings on the landscape of the Altiplano and its people, exploring the relationship between the Indians and the Altiplano. Previously my landscapes had depicted specific locations; now my work focused on the essence of the relationship between the human being and the land. During this period, in 1966, our daughter, Sarita, was born.

My work was recognised in 1973, when I was invited to participate in an exhibition entitled ‘Bolivian Contemporary Painters’ at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. One of my paintings, ‘Women and Land’, was chosen to illustrate the poster. It was a moving experience for me to see a reproduction of my work all over Paris.

When Toynbee’s work ‘Mankind and Mother Earth’ was published, the title intrigued me. I read the work and was very impressed by the last two chapters, which are called ‘Biosphere’. Without realising it, I had been concerned with this theme, not only in my painting, but even in my early work in films. There is no doubt that you experience the spirit of the Earth in Bolivia. Amongst the Indian population this is very alive. Mother Earth is worshipped as Pachamama.

I was invited to exhibit in Japan in 1982. This invitation was an important experience, not only for my painting, but also for my understanding of the origins of the indigenous people of America. It was a marvellous encounter with a highly refined culture. I was surprised to find that there is a module of aesthetics that the Japanese call ”shibui”. This is the view of beauty that consists of four characteristics: tranquillity, simplicity, space and silence. It is a spiritual quality in art that comes from Zen Buddhism. When I saw the Japanese Temple of Horyuji, said to be the oldest wooden structure in the world and the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan, I was overwhelmed by its beauty. This aesthetic experience was exactly the feeling I was seeking in my painting. What a great encounter it was! I came to like Japan and its people enormously.

In 1987, after devoting my painting to the High Andes for many years and exploring the human figure and the land, I decided to travel overland from Peru to Bolivia. It was on this journey that I saw Machu Picchu for the first time. It was an overwhelming experience. The ruins lay in extraordinary harmony with the spectacular surrounding landscape, like a jewel perfectly set in a ring. This feeling gave me a big impetus to work. I stayed there for a period of time and returned to London with thirty drawings. They became the seeds of many paintings on this subject.

The first time I exhibited them was in Tokyo and, soon afterwards, I exhibited the drawings in London. In this exhibition, an English architect, who was developing an ecological approach to architecture, asked me for a reproduction of one of my drawings to illustrate an article of his on this subject. According to him Machu Picchu was a perfect example of ecological architecture. I worked on this subject for five years.

The paintings inspired by Machu Picchu, along with the figures and landscapes, were exhibited four times in Italy: in Venice, Florence, Rapallo and Rome. As most artists in the past and present, I was bewitched by this marvellous country and its people and I was very moved when they made me a fellow of the Archaeological Academy of Rome.

In 1993 I presented a painting of Machu Picchu called ‘Gate to Silence’ to the National Museum in La Paz, Bolivia. My nephew, Fernando Montes Ruiz, who is an anthropologist and a very spiritual person, saw this work and told me that he knew where the next step in my painting lay. Soon after, we travelled to the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca. We went to this island as pilgrims and followed the old Inca road, making offerings at each station on the way until we got to the sacred rock. This is one of the most sacred places in the Andes. It has been worshipped since before Inca times up to present times. This pilgrimage was a magnificent encounter with the Sacred Andes and, as with Machu Picchu, I returned to London with 30 drawings that have become the basis of my recent work. This work was exhibited in Paris in 1996 with the title ‘Les Andes Sacrées’. The exhibition gave me profound satisfaction when I realised how well it was received in that important cultural centre of the world.

It has been a privilege for me to take the spirit of the high Andes to the great centres of the world and to convey my experience to different cultures. This has been a great reward to my effort and struggle with my painting.

Fernando Montes
May 1999
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Obituary
FERNANDO MONTES
by David Buckman
The Independent (London), February 6, 2007

Fernando Montes was a painter whose work, based on extensive travels in South America, interpreted its terrain and people for an international audience. His retrospective exhibition 'Spirit of the Andes' at the Mall Galleries in London last year included powerful, stark images which drew on Bolivia's strong indigenous intellectual traditions.

First, there were the featureless women of the Bolivian High Plateau, or Altiplano, rooted in its distinctive sweeping landscape, haunted by the Andean earth-mother goddess Pachamama - the distinctive dress of the women and their accompanying children in silhouette in some pictures giving them the appearance of mountains and foothills. Secondly, Montes depicted ancient Andean architecture, unpeopled and with a timeless, eerie quality.

Fernando Montes was born in La Paz, Bolivia, in 1930, third child of Hugo Montes, a lawyer and later leader of the Bolivian liberal party, and his wife Eloisa. His father was killed in a motoring accident when Fernando was seven, and he went to live with his maternal grandmother, Sara Minchin, in Argentina. He recalled the train journey when he 'saw from the carriage window the strange and fantastic landscapes of the Altiplano, and also the Salar de Uyuni, a vast salt lake which stretches to the horizon, like a sea of white'.

In the important cultural centre of Buenos Aires, Fernando began to study painting. At 15 he tried to enter the studio of the Catalan painter Vicente Puig, an exile from the Spanish Civil War. Fernando was told to return at 18, as the studio used a nude model. However, his liberal-minded grandmother persuaded Puig to take the boy, and he proved a brilliant but demanding teacher. 'All his comments, although sometimes cruel, were of great depth, simple and intensely expressive, often with a metaphysical meaning,' Montes recalled:

He revealed to me the importance and excellence of drawing and an understanding of the human figure. He said: 'Art is an adventure. If you stab, stab to kill', by which he meant that one had to be deliberate in the way one made marks on the paper.

Montes returned to La Paz to study philosophy at the University of San Andres, then

I joined a group of film-makers, Jorge Ruiz, a childhood friend, and Augusto Roca, who were pioneers of the film industry in Bolivia. We journeyed to remote parts of the Altiplano and descended to the rain forest, where the Moseten tribe of Indians lives. From the drawings I made, I made a series of paintings about these people.

He began to paint professionally: portraits, nudes and landscapes around La Paz. His first exhibition was one of portraits at La Paz's Galera Municipal in 1956. He represented Bolivia at the 5th So Paulo Biennial in Brazil in 1959, the year the Spanish government granted him a scholarship to the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, in Madrid.

In 1960 he moved to London, continuing his studies at St Martin's School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. He had his first exhibition outside his native country in 1965 at the St Martin's Gallery. There were more portraits, but also London cityscapes and paintings of people in London pubs. 'These were a chance to use the human figure, which has always fascinated me.'

In 1965 Fernando, his wife Marcela and their small son, Juan Enrique, visited Bolivia and again encountered the magnificent landscape of my childhood. On seeing the High Andes with the eyes of a mature person I found myself as an artist. I started to work on paintings of the Altiplano. Previously, my landscapes had depicted specific locations, but now it focused on the essence of the relationship between the human being and the land.

Eight years later, Montes was asked to participate in the exhibition 'Bolivian Contemporary Painters' at the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris. He was particularly moved to see his painting Women and Land reproduced as a poster around the city. Montes's work was now being exhibited widely internationally. An invitation in 1982 to show in Japan proved important in his development. And in 1987, on an overland journey from Peru to Bolivia, he saw the famous Inca citadel of Machu Picchu for the first time. His Machu Picchu- inspired paintings, along with figures and landscapes, were exhibited extensively in Italy, in Venice, Florence, Rapallo and Rome.

Montes continued to work and exhibit regularly, even after cancer was diagnosed early in 2003. He painted in the exacting medium of egg tempera, using tiny brushes, making his own colours, carefully preparing each canvas and often making his own frames.

In 1999, he represented Bolivia at the 48th Venice Biennial. As well as the Mall Galleries retrospective last year, he latterly had two others, in 1999 at the Museo Nacional de Arte in La Paz and at the Endoh Gohki Museum in Kyoto, Japan, in 2004.

Fernando Montes, painter and film-maker: born La Paz, Bolivia 14 August 1930; married 1960 Marcela Villegas Sanchez-Bustamante (one son, one daughter); died London 17 January 2007.
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Obituary
Fernando Montes
Artist whose travels influenced his work and reflected his spiritual temperament
August 14, 1930 - January 17, 2007
The Times (London), 21 March 2007

The Bolivian painter Fernando Montes, who lived in London, is known for his gentle, mysterious earth-toned South American landscapes and his Henry-Moore-like figures of the Andean people, silent and still.

He returned to Bolivia regularly, taking in the Inca ruins, snow-capped mountains and the bright, high-altitude skies. His work — which reflected his philosophical and spiritual temperament — evolved over four decades in conjunction with his travels in South America, Europe and the Far East.

He was born in La Paz, the son of a prominent lawyer and politician who at the time of his death was leader of the Bolivian Liberal Party. His earliest memories were of the intensely-coloured sky where Venus can be seen in winter, the towering Mount Illimani and the long rim of the high plateau that leads to Lake Titicaca and Peru.

When he was 12 his family moved to Buenos Aires, and he started at Modelo School. By the age of 15 he knew that painting was his vocation, and obtained extra tuition from Vicente Puig, the best-known artist and teacher in Latin America.

After graduating in philosophy from San Andres University in La Paz he joined Jorge Ruiz and Augusto Roca, who were making the first Bolivian films. They journeyed to the high plateau and down to the rain forest, where Montes sketched the Indian tribe for a later series of paintings. Two years later he left the film world for ever, to paint professionally. He made portraits, nudes and landscapes, and his first exhibition was in the La Paz municipal gallery.

In 1959 the Bolivian government awarded him a scholarship to study at the San Fernando fine art school in Madrid, the equivalent of Britain's Royal Academy. Afterwards he went to London, intending to stay a fortnight. Here he met up with Marcela Villegas, whom he had known in Bolivia. She had come to London as a tourist, liked it, and stayed, working as secretary to the Colombian ambassador.

Montes fell in love with Marcela — whom he married in 1960 — and with London, which he liked for its cultural and artistic life, and for the way it offered him privacy. He did a further course at St Martin’s School of Art and, in 1965, had his first London exhibition there.

He achieved major recognition in 1973 when he was invited to contribute to an exhibition of Bolivian contemporary painters at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

In 1982 he was invited to Japan, where he met the Zen Buddhist aesthetic of shibui, a view of beauty that consists of tranquillity, simplicity, space and silence, which blended with his own. Five years later he visited the ruins of Machu Picchu. The paintings that resulted were exhibited in Venice, Florence, Rapallo and Rome, and led to his election to the Accademia Archeologica Italiano in Rome in 1993.

In 1993, shortly after presenting a painting to the National Museum in La Paz, he travelled as a pilgrim along the Inca trail to the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca. The resulting paintings were exhibited in Paris with the tiles Les Andes Sacrees in 1996. Three years later he represented Bolivia at the Venice Biennale.

In all he had 37 one-man shows and 30 joint shows. His last major exhibition was Spirit of the Andes, a retrospective at the Mall Galleries in April 2006.

He is survived by his wife and by a son and daughter.

Fernando Montes, artist, was born on August 14, 1930. He died on January 17, 2007, aged 76.^3,4

     Marcela Villegas Sánchez Bustamante was born on 27 March 1938 at La Paz, Bolivia^G.¹ She married Fernando Montes Peñaranda, son of Hugo Montes Y Montes and Eloísa Peñaranda Minchin, on 23 December 1960 at London, England^G.¹
     ‘She had come to London as a tourist, liked it, and stayed, working as secretary to the Colombian ambassador.’ -- from obituary of husband Fernando in The Times.

Possible descendant of Bolivian writer and academic Daniel Sánchez Bustamante (1870-1933).²