This is Guillermo Collazo

Guillermo Collazo Tejada (7 June 1850, Santiago de Cuba – 26 September 1896, Paris) was a Cuban painter and modern for independence.

Collazo was born into an usual colonial family. His artistic power was noticed at an in advance age by one of his instructors at teacher in Santiago. While there, he was also goaded to become an independence fighter past the death by firing squad of one of his cousins at age 17. At the beginning of the Ten Years’ War, his parents, aware of his happenings and concerned for his safety, hastily put him upon board a boat headed for the United States.

He arrived in New York following no resources, speaking no English. Eventually, he found a job heartwarming up and coloring photographs at a small shop in the Bowery. After a short time there, he found fake in the studios of Napoleon Sarony, and was competent to keep enough money to contact his own art studio, enjoying great success as a portrait painter. He after that continued to lift money for disordered causes, and helped José Martí get his first writing job at The Hour, a magazine where Collazo worked as an illustrator.

In 1883 he returned to Cuba, opening a studio in Havana. Five years later, hampered by the increasingly stuffy political broadcast there, he contracted to mount up Paris, where he opened a large studio which became a meeting point for the Cuban exile community and, occasionally, a place for planning disordered activities. In 1890, two of his works were agreed for an exhibition at the Salon.

In his resolved years, he devoted himself to sculpture because an addiction to narcotics had affected his eyesight and he was unable to focus handily enough to paint. He died in Paris and, in 1899, after the War of Independence, his family brought his remains encourage to Cuba.

His works were not exhibited in Cuba until 1933, when the architect Evelio Govantes (1886-1981) organized a showing at the Lyceum taking into consideration paintings borrowed from Collazo’s friends and family. In 1976, his painting “The Patio” was used on one of a series of stamps admiration Cuban painters.

His brother, Enrique (1848-1921), was a high-ranking commander in the Liberation Army.