Jota Leal was born in a small town in eastern Venezuela, thirty years ago.
He began drawing and painting when very young, and never studied fine art. Encouraged to attend an art class as a child of six, he ran away after being forced to paint plastic fruit and empty bottles.
From the beginning, Leal seemingly knew exactly what he wanted to do - which was to paint people, and particularly to caricaturise their faces.
Leal was the second of three brothers, whose parents worked in the oil fields. One of his first memories is of drawing some lines for his amazed parents, as a baby. His subsequent birthday and Christmas gifts were all limited to pencils, crayons, and drawing materials.
ENGINEERING HIS OWN CAREER.
Having been surrounded by engineers and those with ‘real’ jobs, Leal went on to study electrical engineering and graduated with honors. No one in his family knows how he accomplished this, as he was so obsessed with drawing and painting. But it didn’t take long for his circuits to become lines, the numbers to become colors, and the sweep of physics theories to be replaced by sweep of the brush.
These days Leal paints all the time, as obsessed with his craft as ever. It's a dedication he attributes to his parents: “They made me believe it was something I was good at. I have not stopped painting since.”
In 2001 Leal travelled to Spain and lived there, immersing himself in the history and technique of art. He then returned to his hometown in Venezuela, where he received the Caricaturist of the Year Award for 2003.
Today, the talented Venezuelan is known worldwide. His amazing portraits of Johnny Depp, Jimi Hendrix, John Malkovitch, Al Pacino as Scarface, Babe Ruth, and others are considered classics of their kind while his visual commentary on world affairs is constantly in demand.
DISCOVER VENEZUELA'S JOTA IEAL HERE!
All Images ©Copyright 2008 by JOTA LEAL
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