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Ramon Navarro was born in Port of
Spain Trinidad, in 1945, one of five children, to a Trinidadian
father and a Venezuelan mother.
From as early an age as fourteen,
he began selling drawings and paintings, his primary subjects
being figurative, folk and landscape which have remained so to
this day. His artistic ability soon led to the more lucrative
work of advertising which Ramon explored over the next twenty
years developing other art related interests along the way.
(These included silkscreen printing and plastic signs
incorporating airbrushing.)
Ramon began painting seriously in
oils on canvas. He joined the Trinidad Art Society and submitted
a painting titled “Boys Pitching Marbles” to the Independence
exhibition. It was accepted by the critical panel of M.P. Alladin,
Sybil Atteck and Carlisle Chang, and was displayed with such
artists work as Alfred Cadallo, Dermott Louison and Willie Chen.
He was inspired greatly by his dear friend and mentor Len ‘Baba’
Holder and on a visit to Venezuela, by Venezuelan artists such as
Arturo Michelera, and Cristobal Rojas. His horizons were further
broadened when he journeyed to Paris, his dream Mecca of Art. He
spent day after day at the Louvre studying the great masters whose
work continue to inspire him.
On his return to Trinidad, Ramon
submitted three paintings to the Art Society’s 1967 exhibition.
The largest of these “The Market Woman” won the ‘Best Painting’
award.
Ramon further traveled to New York
for a six-month period, studying the works of the great American
artists and sharing in discussions with many young painters.
Although he examined abstraction and other approaches he could not
relate and remained true to his original expression.
Though Ramon Navarro has had a
career in art, spanning some four decades, he has rarely exhibited
his paintings.
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