HERBERT DE PAZ
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My work stems from a personal need to explore the spaces left behind by silence, displacement, and time. Driven by an intimate search for the images missing from my own journey, my practice functions as an archaeology of fragments. As a migrant, the experience of leaving one landscape to inhabit another introduces a state of constant transition and reconstruction. This geographical and cultural distance shapes my search; my paintings use the canvas as a site for allegorical excavation, where the sense of absence caused by displacement becomes the raw material for new compositions. Drawing inspiration from architectural structures, art forms, and the historical depth of Mesoamerican mural cultures and traditions, my practice also engages with the language of contemporary Brazilian painting, particularly in the way it reinterprets history through the materiality of the canvas.
Bio
Herbert De Paz (Santa Tecla, El Salvador, 1991) lives and works between El Salvador and Rio de Janeiro since 2013. Born and raised during the Salvadoran postwar decade, he started taking art lessons at the age of 16 through a high school technical course in Architecture at Instituto Emiliani, later enrolling in drawing lessons at Palacio Tecleño de la Cultura y las Artes. At the age of 21, he learned Portuguese and moved to Brazil to study at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) after being accepted into a cultural exchange program offered by the Brazilian Government. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts (2018) and a Master’s Degree in Art History from UERJ (2024), where his academic research focused on pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican Art and Mural Painting.
His artistic practice operates as an intimate archaeology of fragments, articulating archaeological records, childhood memories, and the lacunae left by geographical displacement. Far from a documentary reconstruction, his work investigates the visuality of fractured territories to reorder narratives of belonging, creating a poetic space where myth and quiet daily life cohabit the canvas as forms of permanence and spiritual resistance.
During his student years, De Paz won a scholarship to join the research group led by artist and professor Cristina Salgado (2013–2015). Following this period, he worked as an Art Educator for several exhibition projects in institutions such as the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio (MAM), Casa Museu Eva Klabin, and Centro Municipal de Artes Hélio Oiticica (CMAHO). He also volunteered for the Lanchonete Lanchonete project, teaching drawing and painting to children from Rio's Pequena África region. He expanded his practice at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV), participating in the Fundamentação program (2013–2014) and the Formação e Deformação program (2019) led by curators Keyna Eleison and Ulisses Carrilho, which concluded with a collective exhibition.
In 2021, he presented his first solo exhibition, Ibirapema: paintings by Herbert De Paz, curated by Aldones Nino at A Gentil Carioca Gallery. This was followed in 2023 by his second solo show, La Sangre Nunca Muere, at Cassia Bomeny Gallery, curated by Keyna Eleison, both in Rio de Janeiro. He recently presented his third solo exhibition, a pop-up show titled En la Casa Hablamos Caliche, held at Espaço 42B in his hometown of Santa Tecla. In 2022, he was nominated for the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) Grants and Commissions Program Award. In 2024, he completed his first artist residency at La Fábrica in El Salvador, sponsored by YES Contemporary. In 2026, he was selected by Casa Museu Eva Klabin for the Dentro da Casa residency program, researching their collection of Andean artifacts to further develop his dialogue with pre-Hispanic visual culture.
Herbert De Paz's works have been exhibited in El Salvador, Brazil, the United States, and Mexico. His pieces are part of major institutional and public collections, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami), the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), and the Bernardo Paz Collection.