It can be safely said that Lorenzo Homar (1913–2004) is the father of the Puerto Rican poster. He devoted his whole life to the development of this medium at the División de Educación de la Comunidad [DIVEDCO, Community Education Department]. He later worked at the Taller del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña [Puerto Rican Cultural Institute Workshop] and eventually had his own workshop. He trained virtually every subsequent Puerto Rican graphic artist, such as Antonio Martorell, José Rosa, José Alicea, Luis Abraham Ortiz, and Myrna Báez, among many others. He was undoubtedly also responsible for the development of silkscreen printing in Puerto Rico, and taught graphic workshops overseas.
Plástica magazine, where this review was published, was an art publication that appeared fairly regularly in Puerto Rico. It began modestly enough in 1968, as the newsletter of the Liga de arte de San Juan [San Juan Art League], but changed its name in 1978 to Plástica revista de la Liga de estudiantes de San Juan [San Juan Student League Visual Arts Magazine]. Its very specific title notwithstanding, the twenty-one issues of the magazine explored a wide range of subjects within the broad parameters of Puerto Rican and Latin American art, filling its pages with retrospective coverage of subjects, such as the V Bienal de San Juan del grabado latinoamericano y del Caribe [5th San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Prints] (1981), Puerto Rican architecture, and Latin American visual arts. The first editorial board of the magazine included Hélène Saldaña, Delta Picó, Cordelia Buitrago, and J.M. García Segovia. In addition to the many essays written by top Puerto Rican thinkers, the magazine published contributions from some of the leading Latin American artists and critics, such as Luis Camnitzer, Damián Bayón, Jacqueline Barnitz, Samuel Cherson, Joseph Alsop, Omar Rayo, and Ricardo Pau Llosa, among many others.
