How did Lorenzo Homar use Puerto Rican iconography in his posters without falling into cliché?
Lorenzo Homar was a multidisciplinary artist working in calligraphy, painting, jewelry design, and printmaking, but his poster work is the primary focus of his legacy and of the Poster House exhibition. Curator Alejandro Andres describes how Homar drew consistently from Puerto Rican folk art traditions, using the image of the Three Kings, carved wooden santos, the colors of the tropics, and the Puerto Rican flag in ways that felt specific and culturally grounded rather than decorative or cliche. His color combinations were distinctive and sometimes unexpected, combining purples with yellow ochres or intensities that reflected Caribbean light without relying on tropical color cliches. Homar worked across two major modes: poster work for government initiatives and cultural institutions on one hand, and work made alongside graphic workshops calling for Puerto Rican independence on the other. The exhibition draws from 30 years of his output, tracing an evolution from more conventional typographic approaches toward increasing experimentation. When Homar became head of the Graphic Division of Community Education, he took on silkscreen as his primary medium at a moment when it had been used in Puerto Rico only for commercial purposes. He expanded the expressive possibilities of silkscreen almost single-handedly, developing a range of typographic styles spanning medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque influences that he mixed freely depending on the subject. Andres emphasizes that Homar's work always reflected changing social and cultural context and that his posters cannot be separated from the political history of Puerto Rico during the period he was active. The episode uses the exhibition as a framework for discussing what graphic design means when it is rooted in a specific place and used both to celebrate and advocate for that place.
