Career
Blanco's first solo exhibition was in 1974, where he showed sculpture and drawings. A year later, he moved to Rome, Italy, where he continued to work in sculpture while making a living by doing freelance graphic design drawing cartoons for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including political cartoons for the newspaper L'Opinione. It was during this period that he first conceived the idea of a comic strip.
In 1978, Blanco participated in the Bordhigera Humor Salon, winning the Dattero D'Argento, and in the Monterotondo Sculpture Salon, where he was awarded the first prize for medium format sculpture.
In 1979, Blanco returned to Caracas, Venezuela where he exhibited his sculptures and drawings at the Sofía Imber Museum of Contemporary Art. Here, he continued working in sculpture but he also designed and illustrated a children's newspaper El Cohete.
In 1980, he was hired as the Art Director for the Caracas Children's Museum (Art, Science and Technology, Museo de los Niños) (1980–1998). He worked there for 18 years.
That same year, Blanco created the comic strip The Castaway/El Náufrago, which became an overnight success. It was published in major newspapers and magazines in Venezuela and lead to significant sales in merchandising and books. The Castaway even crossed over to television. Due to the comic's success, Blanco no longer had time to work on his sculpture alongside his work as freelance graphic designer, illustrator, and his job at the museum, and reluctantly had to put sculpture aside.
In 1989, Blanco returned to sculpture, and eventually left the Caracas Children's Museum to move to the United States, where he still lives today. Whereas his earlier work focused on more unconventional materials, his work now had a different approach, focused more on metals and bright colors. Blanco began exhibiting again in both Venezuela and the United States as well as around the world. In 1996, Blanco installed four sculptures in Tokyo, Japan, which launched his fascination with public art.
Since 1999, Blanco has lived and worked on the West Coast of Florida, with a particular focus on public art. In 2005, Blanco became an American citizen. He currently resides in Sarasota, Florida.
In 2007, Blanco received the John Ringling Visual Art Award.
Read more about this topic: Jorge Blanco
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)