Santos de la Torre

In 2017, the Congress of the State of Jalisco gave him the Order “José Clemente Orozco” for his distinguished work in the painting field. Nowadays, Santos de la Torre continues creating arts at small, medium and grand format, and also maintains, along his family, a crafts workshop.

In 2016 he exhibited his work in Mazatlán, which seek establishing a dialog between the huichol people and the Haida people, from Canada, through art. He has also show his work in Zacatecas and Mexico City

Santos de la Torre was the object of interviews and articles in 2014 (from the Prize of the Press that the film Eco de la montaña received at the 29th Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara) in which he explained that his murals should be seen from bottom to top, like trees grow, and that making one took about eight months.

After this work came Pensamiento y alma huichol (1997) located at the Palais-Royal Musée du Louvre station in Paris; Visión de un mundo místico (2001) located at Museo Zacatecano; El nuevo amanecer (2003) which belongs to the “Folk art” collection at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago; Eco de la montaña (Echo of the Mountain) (2014), centerpiece of Nicolas Echavarria's documentary, and Diosa madre del caballo, Xotori K`kyari (2016), at the Hotel Playa Tierra Tropical located in San Francisco, Rivera Nayarit.

Pensamiento y alma huichol  was created in 1997 for Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre station as part of the RATP - Mexico City Metro alliance. This is his most renowned and talked about work, which represents huichol deities, ancestors, myths, flora and fauna on a horizontal tripctic of the underground, the earth and the sky. The work is composed by 80 boards and elaborated with two million beads of 2 millimeters each one. It is located at the Palais-Royal Musée du Louvre towards the Carrousel du Louvre. On this work, researcher Miguel Gleason comments on his book México insólito en Europa: “Its perhaps the most impressive and detailed work in Europe, composed by more of 2 million beads that shows the cosmogony of that community (huichol people)”.

Besides working on the field, Santos started looking for new ways of expressions, that, besides from being groundbreaking, meant a deep experience when it came to myths, Gods, ancestors and principles that created the huichol cosmogony. This is how he and his family created Sonido de Musico, composed by 100 pieces of 15 x 15 cm that will become the mark of murals that ended up making his career on a global level. In 1993 he obtained resources from the Programa de Fomento a Proyectos y Coinversiones Culturales del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes with his work Misterio y viaje de los tres espíritus sagrados.

His artistic career started at 23 years old, right at the top moment of huichol contemporary art, portrayed globally by artists like José Benítez Sánchez and Tutukila Carrillo Sandoval. His brother, Jesus, asked him to travel to Mexico City to sell arts and crafts and learn basic techniques of huichol art crafting. It was in Mexico City where young Santos learned Spanish and where he started in the creation of works based on personal designs. In 1968 he meet John C. Lilly and his wife Colette, who, mesmerized by his work bought his first works and asked him more information about the enigmatic huichol culture. Santos agreed to take them to the community of Santa Catarina where the couple made a crucial documentary task for expanding and protecting huichol culture internationally at the top of the psicodelia culture.

With Lilly's protection, the artist met architect Eduardo Terrazas who invited him to collaborate with team of huichol artists that took part on creating an identity logo for the 1968 Summer Olympics. His collaboration continued for various years and it allowed him to take part in contemporary art projects like Tablas, which took places at Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1972, in which Terrazas made a visual exploration of geometric structures inspired on huichol art. At the end of the 70's he made a series of woodblocks with yarn, symbol of the SAHOP under the leadoff architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez.

Santos Motoapohua de la Torre (born April 28, 1942 in Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, Jalisco) is one of the most world renowned Huichol artists. His works aims to capture the mystery and magnificence of Wixárika's cosmogony and his main works are located in places like Paris, Chicago, Zacatecas and Nayarit. The meaning of his huichol name, “Motoapohua”, is “Echo of the mountain”.