12 Facts About Camilo Mori

Camilo Mori Serrano was a Chilean painter and a founder of the Grupo Montparnasse.

The son of an Italian immigrant, Camilo Mori entered the "Escuela de Bellas Artes" at the University of Chile in 1914 and studied under masters Juan Francisco Gonzalez, Richon Brunet and Alberto Valenzuela Llanos.

Camilo Mori joined the gathering of artists in the Montparnasse Quarter in Paris.

However it was the influence of the works of Paul Cezanne that challenged Camilo Mori to move away from the Realism that marked his earlier work.

Camilo Mori started experimenting with a variety of styles which later formed the basis of modern art.

Camilo Mori exhibited in the Salon d'Automne of 1920 in Paris, where his "Circo de la Feria" received an honorable mention.

Camilo Mori returned to Chile and became one of the founding members of the Grupo Montparnasse, a key influence in the diffusion of the new European painting trends in Chile.

In 1928 Camilo Mori was named director of the National Museum of Fine Arts.

In 1928, as an initiative to mitigate the closure of the School of Fine Arts, Camilo Mori was sent by the Chilean government to Europe, this time to direct the studies of a group of young painters known as the "Generation of 1928", which culminated in 26 of the most outstanding young Chilean artists being sent to study in Paris for five years.

Camilo Mori returned to Chile in 1933, where he accepted a position as professor of drawing and color at the Universidad de Chile, a post he retained for over 30 years.

Camilo Mori was placed in charge of supervising the decoration of, and created a mural for, the pavilion of Chile at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Camilo Mori's work was complex and multifaceted and moved through Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism and Surrealism, with the common trend among them being a prominent treatment of color.