Guillermo Olguín

Guillermo Olguín

enRoute Canada / Magazine

Different Strokes

In Oaxaca, the painters are proud, the art spills out into the streets and curators are made overnight.


... His huge canvases incorporate indigenous iconography and sometimes actual pieces of Oaxaca: sand and soil. Olguín enjoys rebel status in the city. At six-foot-five, he’s often found helmetless on his battered BMW motorbike (for which he traded a painting). He runs a notorious bar, a quasi-speakeasy called Café Central. The last time I met him, he insisted I climb on the back of his bike and drove us to a favourite restaurant, which was more of a cantina-like affair hidden behind a restaurant. I can’t really recommend the street-front place, but the secret backroom was superb. I’d tell you where it is, but he’d kill me.

BY DOUGLAS ANTHONY COOPER.