Carlos Stohr

Biography

He signed his work in two ways: traditional pieces C. STOHR, abstract and “modern” ones C.S. PRAGA. The city of his birth stayed on his sheets of paper long after his life had moved to the other side of the Atlantic.

He was born on 29 September 1931 in Prague, the son of Franšitek Josef Stöhr and Maria Breuer. His full Czech name was Karel František Stöhr Breuer. In 1947 the family emigrated to Venezuela, as biographical accounts put it, to escape war and communism, and settled in El Trompillo, in Carabobo State. He translated his name into Spanish and became Carlos Francisco Stohr Breuer. He studied at the Don Bosco secondary school in Valencia and then at the Simón Bolívar secondary school in San Cristóbal (Táchira State), where he finished school in 1951. In 1959 he graduated from the engineering faculty of the Central University of Venezuela as a surveying engineer (agrimensor), and later taught there himself. He took part in designing several residential districts of Caracas, among them Ciudad Satélite La Trinidad. He also worked at the National Agrarian Institute.

In 1953 he first came to Margarita Island and, by his own account, fell in love with it. He returned for decades, and around 2006, at the age of seventy-five, he moved there for good and set about documenting the history and culture of Nueva Esparta State.

The village of Tacarigua held a special place; he called it his other love. There he became friends with the chronicler José Joaquín Salazar Franco, known as Cheguaco, and drew 286 illustrations for six of his books on the customs and traditions of Margarita. His daughter Karina recalled that every trip her father made to the island included a stop in Tacarigua. He himself said: “I am a tacarigüero born in Prague — a checo-tacarigüero.” Hence the nickname El Tacaricheco.

The body of work is large: more than 5,200 drawings and paintings, 31 solo exhibitions, three permanent displays and over a hundred group shows. He worked mostly on paper: Indian ink, graphite, pen, watercolour, sanguine, pastel; he painted in oil less often. His subjects were the island’s landscapes, everyday life, crafts and the look of its people. His main series, Rastros y Rostros (“Traces and Faces”), gathered portraits of about 330 notable people of Margarita over forty years; in 2014 it was published as a book. Earlier came his own illustrated books: on playing dominoes in pairs (1989, 23 drawings), “Our Margarita Experiences” (1991), “Margarita, a Single Face” (1996, 201 illustrations) and “The Czechs in Venezuela” (1998). In 1996 he designed the La Guaicora silver commemorative medal, which preserves the old name of the island.

It was Salazar Franco who proposed him as Graphic Chronicler of Margarita in 1993. The Association of Chroniclers of Nueva Esparta recognised him in 1996, and in 1999, at the 29th Convention of Official Chroniclers of Venezuela in Mérida, he was sworn in as the only Graphic Chronicler in the country. He belonged to the associations of writers of Nueva Esparta, of plastic artists and of watercolourists, and to the drawing circles of Nueva Esparta and Caracas.

Among his honours: adopted son of the municipalities of Gómez and Antolín del Campo, “Living Cultural Heritage” (2001), the regional prize for visual arts in the Drawing category (2003), and a prize for costumbrista drawing (2006). Costumbrismo means scenes of everyday folk life, and these prizes show, I think, what he was valued for.

In his youth he was a diver, and at the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico City he won silver in springboard diving. He spoke six languages, played bridge in international tournaments and collected vintage cars and stamps; part of his car collection went to the Caracas Transport Museum.

Carlos Stohr died on 24 December 2017 in Caracas, aged 86.