Noe Canjura -- from Apopa to Paris

“Le dormeur cache” by Noe Canjura

This past weekend a colonia in municipality of Apopa named for Noe Canjura celebrated a cultural festival and block party. The event featured music, art, food and conviviality.  But who was Apopa's most famous son, Noe Canjura?  

From Wikipedia:

Noe Canjura was born in 1922 in Apopa, to a family of landless peasants of humble origin. By the time of his death, he was recognized as one of the leading landscape, still life, and figure painters of France. 

As a youth, Canjura was raised in intimate contact with the struggle of wrestling a livelihood from the infertile soil of his native village. 

To pay part of his expenses and to lighten the weight of the sacrifices his father made to keep him in school, Canjura worked in a sawmill and often spent the night there, sleeping on bare boards. 

His talent for drawing came to light when he was seventeen years old and, without knowing how or why, his adventure in the art world began. He first studied painting at the Academy of Painting of Valero Lecha in San Salvador (1942–1946).

Canjura would later study in Mexico and ultimately made his way to Paris where his prominence as a painter grew.    He would return for a visit to El Salvador and Apopa in 1968, but died an untimely death from hepatitis in 1970 at the age of 48.

See more of Canjura's artwork at this link.