28 Facts About Porfirio Salinas

Porfirio Salinas was an early Texas landscape painter who is recognized for his depictions of the Texas Hill Country in the springtime.

Porfirio Salinas was one of the first Mexican American artists to become nationally recognized for his paintings.

Porfirio Salinas was described by The New York Times as being United States President Lyndon B Johnson's favorite painter.

Works by Salinas are displayed in the Texas State Capitol, the Texas Governor's Mansion and in a number of museums including the Witte Museum in San Antonio, Texas, and the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum.

Porfirio Salinas was born on November 6,1910, near Bastrop, Texas, to a family of Mexican American tenant farmers.

Porfirio Salinas's father, Porfirio G Salinas, and his mother, Clara G Chavez Salinas, left the farm for San Antonio when Porfirio was a child.

Porfirio Salinas was a precocious talent who drew and painted from the time he was a small boy and received encouragement from his teachers.

Porfirio Salinas had little formal education and left school when he was young in order to work in an art supply store.

Porfirio Salinas went to work in Wood's studio in 1925, where he learned the basics of being a professional painter.

Porfirio Salinas stretched Wood's canvasses, and learned to frame paintings, how to mix paints and how to prepare canvas under Wood's supervision.

Wood was a very capable businessman, and Porfirio Salinas learned how to sell and market his art from the English painter.

Porfirio Salinas accompanied Wood and the Spanish-born artist and teacher Jose Arpa on sketching trips to the hills and valleys surrounding San Antonio where they painted blooming wildflowers in the spring and the Texas Red Oak in the fall.

Porfirio Salinas began painting professionally in 1930, when he was twenty years old.

Porfirio Salinas painted many scenes of Texas bluebonnets, the state flower, which were sold to tourists by the artists and galleries in San Antonio, Texas.

The Johnsons' Porfirio Salinas paintings remain in the collection of the LBJ Ranch today.

Porfirio Salinas was recognized by the city of his birth, Bastrop, Texas in 1960, when he was fifty years old.

Porfirio Salinas had a solo exhibition at the Witte Museum in San Antonio in 1962.

Porfirio Salinas's work was widely published by the New York Graphic Society, which added to his national reputation.

Porfirio Salinas died on April 18,1973, after a brief illness.

Porfirio Salinas was memorialized in the City of Austin with Porfirio Salinas Day in 1973.

Ruth Goddard wrote a book titled Porfirio Salinas that was published two years after his death.

In celebration of the centennial of Salinas' birth, the Witte Museum mounted an exhibition titled Porfirio Salinas: Painting South Texas that opened on October 16,2010, and ran to March 20,2011.

The professional career of Porfirio Salinas stretched to more than forty years.

Porfirio Salinas's work is divided among a number of subjects, but Hill Country landscapes of the Texas bluebonnets predominate.

Porfirio Salinas painted many scenes of Texas red oak trees in the autumn and prickly pear cactus.

Porfirio Salinas made trips to Mexico and painted rural Mexican villages and the volcanoes that are south of Mexico City.

For Mexican American audiences, Porfirio Salinas painted small scenes of bullfights, cockfights, and Mexican fandangos.

Porfirio Salinas married Maria Bonillas, a Mexican woman who worked for the Mexican National Railways, in San Antonio in 1943.