About The Artist

Hugo Martínez Rapari lives and works in his hometown of Montevideo, capital city of Uruguay. Born in 1964, he’s been in a quest for art throughout all of his life. He started doing amateur drawing at an early age and in recent years started pursuing a formal and thorough training in arts and arts and crafts. In 1990 he graduated as a C.P.A. from the Uruguayan State University. Two years after obtaining his degree Hugo traveled around South and North America (Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, United States of America). In these trips he learned about the essence and simplicity of the two continents. During this trip he started sensing how the continent’s countless bright and vibrant colors pervade onlookers with a certain feeling of unusual joy, vitality and coolness. Back home he started designing ornaments and lamps and studied design and interior design, framing and started to work with mixed technique and acrylic, glass fusing , sculpture in glass and iron, jewelry , photography, etc.. He started designing jewelry in glass, gold, silver and steel for the national brand “Fusionuy”.( Later on he launched his artful jewelry collection), continued studying molding and glass fusing with renowned Argentinean artists. He also studied art with different Uruguayan, Argentinean, Spanish, Czech, Italian and Chilean artists and in different institutions, museums, cultural centers and art organizations of Uruguay, Argentina Mexico, Spain and Germany. In the last two years he received fourteen honors and awards in all art languages he explored: painting, jewelry, sculpture and photography in both countries Uruguay and Argentina, including first awards and honorable mentions. He exhibited his art work in solo and group exhibitions in Uruguay, Argentina and U.S.A. including museums, art galleries, fairs and embassies such as the Museum of the Americas of Miami and the U.S.A. Embassy in Uruguay. In his own words about paintings “My painting literally takes off from the frame, floating in an infinite, magical universe. The 3D effects become tangible and concrete. Space is also part of the art work. Points of view change as the observer moves. The puzzle is broken up and solved out by simply walking around the piece of art”. My glass work: technique, motivation and inspiration. I was enthralled by the possibilities it offers. Its characteristics make it intriguing and yet poetic. Glass lets me express -in an almost magical fashion- my spirituality and beauty without resorting to perfection nor conditionings. All human beings have this spirituality and beauty, and each one of us express them in different but equally pure and frank languages. It brightness and luminosity speak of permanence, light and wisdom. Just like art, it is put together and then broken down time and again. Treated as a creator God the glass molecules change, break apart and come together again. They reorganize themselves through heat, like a timeless unruffled embrace. The results are one of kind, unique, changeable and ethereal pieces. They accept and yet stand no critics. Like our divine human essence they are matchless. As if it were a uniqueness theorem where what is, is again and again, like the true being existential paradigm. The fire -a god in our culture and in so many others- the burning heat and almighty forces of nature without which the bitter cold would paralyze us. The fire bewitches the glass, makes it dance, vibrate, move and stay. Fire beautifies it, lets it express itself and is at all times present in our creation, when we are all god and architects of our destiny. As a corollary our environment remains unchanged and uninvaded in amicable coexistence with the cosmos, with history and ancestor, for as far back as ancient Egypt the glass fusing technique is present in our world leaving its silent message: transcendence beyond art, beyond the artisan, the object and its function. Glass, as well as its origin speaks to us. The glass I use is pure and it comes from far away places, from houses that have a history and passion of their own. My glass comes from foreign and universal languages. The metals –silver and gold- and the “daring” such as steel, offered to us by nature, nature that knows no borders or limits. We feel identified by our history and culture, whether from unique beings or from our birth and independently of technique, materials or creation. From there we come and being at peace with our origins gives us freedom, lets us fly, vibrate and be at ease in a world that knows no vanities or shame. Tango, poetry, carnival and street parades… I create series with a story, with a name of their own and with the cultural identity of my own homeland and roots. They remind me of my mother, my family and its stories. Stories that I so much heard and lived. They remind me of my stories. My jewelry has a story to tell, its history and also mine. Beauty existing in every human being is undeniable, and with “every” I mean every single human being! Is this piece of jewelry the perfect frame for inner human beauty? Or is it simply the bright reflection of the soul in the pond of life?