Giovanni Gil

He also holds the position of Director and Coordinator of Visual Arts at CENAR in 2017.

In 2016 the activity is carried out for the fourth consecutive year and the number of participants grows, being 44 artists and students, the technique that was worked on that occasion was Chalcography and Drypoint and the engravings were mostly illuminated . At the same time Silvia Elena Regalado, Secretary of Culture, re-denominates February as Engraving month in the context of the inauguration of Bajo Presión 2016 . Another important aspect that all the editions of Bajo Presión have is that the collection of engravings after its official presentation travel and are exhibited throughout El Salvador to bring art to the public.

Bajo Presión 2014, reunited 32 artists and students, this is when the Secretary of Culture appointed the month of February 2014 as the Engraving month in El Salvador. In Bajo Presión 2015, 36 artists met, among them students, as on previous occasions, in order to support talented young Salvadorans to forge their careers in art.

This particular project brought together, in its first edition in 2013, 22 Salvadoran artists and students of engraving and was dedicated to the person who inspired Giovanni to undertake the arts, Carlos Cañas. .

The artist Giovanni Gil creates social initiative Soñar al Revés in 2003 in order to raise awareness, inform and bring the Salvadoran population closer with engraving, the arts in general and also to change the vision of Salvadorans to dream upside down with their reality, in other words that they aspire to make a change in their reality by taking the first step, which is according to the artist, dreaming. Its name is born of the technique of the engraving where everything that is drawn must be think the opposite way so that the impression is to the right. This initiative has exhibitions such as:

In 1997 he was promoted to Head of the Engraving Workshop at CENAR and in 1999 he made a study trip to Japan, where he visited art schools, galleries and museums. In 2001 he returns to travel for study to Cuba.

He began his art studies in 1991 at the National Center of Arts [Centro Nacional de Artes, CENAR], with the Baccalaureate in Arts where he develops his skills in the schools of Theater, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts. It is the latter that captivates him, he specializes in the branch of Engraving at the request of Master Carlos Cañas, who served at that time as director of the CENAR. He completed his studies in 1993 and is hired as a professor in 1994 in this same institution, when he decides to pursue his university studies at the Salvadoran Lutheran University [Universidad Luterana Salvadoreña] where he graduated with a degree in Education Administration.

Giovanni Gil, also known as Hector Giovanni Gil Portillo (San Salvador, December 19, 1971) is a plastic artist and one of the greatest exhibitors of Engraving in El Salvador. He is the founder and director of the projects Soñar al Revés [Dreaming Backwards] and Bajo Presión [Under Pressure] and is the winner of the Silver Medal at the Salon of Contemporary Art El Salvador-