Biography 

Ana Julia Álvarez de Bovard (San Salvador, El Salvador, 1908–Toronto, Canada, 2007)

Ana Julia Álvarez de Bovard was a Salvadoran painter and potter based in the United States of America and Canada. She studied painting under Guatemalan artist Carlos Mérida, whose work was influenced by Mexican muralism. From 1929 to 1930, she attended the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in San Salvador, and in 1944/45, she studied at the New School for Social Research (New York, N.Y.), as well as the Sarah Lawrence College (Bronxville, N.Y.). She began exhibiting her paintings as a teenager, receiving many awards from the Rotary Club of San Salvador and the Amigos del Arte Association, including the latter's first prize in 1936, 1937 and 1938. She is recognized as the first Salvadoran woman to publicly exhibit her artworks in El Salvador, and is considered a predecessor to Julia Díaz (1917-1999) and Rosa Mena Valenzuela (1924-2004), two painters with significant contributions to Salvadoran art history. In 1958, she relocated to Los Angeles, and in 1972 to Panama City (FL), where she taught ceramics. Her artworks Vendedoras de Frutas and Ojo de Agua are part of the first permanent exhibition of San Salvador's MARTE museum, from 2003 to 2007. Ana Julia was awarded several painting and pottery prizes in El Salvador and the United States. In 1992, she relocated to Toronto, Canada, to stay with her son. After a few years back in Panama city (1995-2001), she returned to Toronto before her passing in 2007.

Ana Julia Álvarez's work features representations of Salvadoran women, many with Indigenous traces, in Art Deco style. According to Museo MARTE, such representations are influenced by her life abroad, in which the construction of what is “Salvadoran”—a gradual process of recognition establishing in the 1930's and 1940's—was defined by the foreign view. Ana Julia's work was featured in solo exhibitions in San Salvador (1950, 1965), Moultrie (Georgia) (1953) and Panama City (1970), as well as several dual and collective exhibitions in El Salvador (1935-37, 1940) and the United States (1941-1971).