Carmelo Sobrino (Manatí, b. 1948) studied art at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña [School of Fine Arts of the Puerto Rican Cultural Institute], and in Mexico. On his return to Puerto Rico in 1969 he attended the Taller Alacrán [Scorpio Workshop] that was founded by Antonio Martorell (Santurce, b. 1939). A year later Sobrino opened his own workshop, called Capricornio [Capricorn], which he managed until 1975. In 1988, the Galería Caribe in San Juan organized an exhibition of Sobrino’s work that included fifteen paintings that were beach scenes with people.
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.