Luis Merino (Uta)

Luis Merino was born in 1942 in Mexico City. He started life drawing lessons at age 15 and went on to study visual arts at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico City between 1967-1969. He studied on scholarship at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende in 1969. In Mexico, Merino was a well-received painter and mural designer.

In 1970, Merino immigrated to Canada, settling in Victoria in 1972. Here he soon became a prominent and active member in the arts community. He painted murals inside various public buildings, exhibited his paintings at local galleries, and was instrumental in the organization of exhibitions of local art.

In the 1990's, Luis Merino moved back to Mexico, but he returns to Victoria periodically to exhibit his lively and colourful paintings dominated by abstractions of the human form.