Giovanni Gil

Hector Giovanni Gil Portillo (born 19 December 1971) is a plastic artist from El Salvador specializing in engraving.

Early life and education Giovanni Gil was born on 19 December 1971 in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, to Marina Portillo and Luis Felipe Gil. He has two brothers.

Between 1991 and 1993, he studied theater, music, dance, and visual arts at the Centro Nacional de Artes (CENAR). After completing his graduation, he worked at CENAR as a professor. He later pursued a degree in education administration at Universidad Luterana Salvadoreña.

Gil travelled to Japan in 1997, visiting art schools, galleries and museums to learn more about engraving and print techniques. He became interested in engraving after Salvadorian painter Carlos Cañas, then director of CENAR, encouraged him to explore the art form. In 2001, he spent time in Cuba, studying Cuban art techniques.

Soñar al Revés [Dreaming Backwards] The artist Giovanni Gil creates social initiative Soñar al Revés in 2003 in order to raise awareness, inform and bring the Salvadoran population closer with engraving, the arts in general and also to change the vision of Salvadorans to dream upside down with their reality, in other words that they aspire to make a change in their reality by taking the first step, which is according to the artist, dreaming. Its name is born of the technique of the engraving where everything that is drawn must be think the opposite way so that the impression is to the right. This initiative has exhibitions such as:

Bajo Presión [Under Pressure]

“The project aims to generate a participation among established, emerging and initiated (students) artists in the practice of engraving, with the purpose of transferring knowledge” - Giovanni Gil. This is how Giovanni Gil defines the project of which he is founder and director. Bajo Presión [Under Pressure] was born with a primary objective, which is to join the guild of artists in El Salvador, And not only to seek unity among them, but to retake the technique that was and has been practiced by great exhibitors of plastic art in history. Its name comes from the process of creating an engraving where pressure is exerted on two surfaces and an image is obtained, however it is also born, as described by one of the participants Juan Glower, by the group pressure that is generated where the opinions of all counts and one has to strip himself of his individuality to form part of a whole; among the techniques that this artist has encouraged to learn or develop in greater depth are Etching, Aquatint and Drypoint.“[...] The democratization of the visual arts is sought, both in visual consumption and material” - Giovanni Gil.

This particular project brought together, in its first edition in 2013, 22 Salvadoran artists and students of engraving

Bajo Presión 2014, reunited 32 artists and students, this is when the Secretary of Culture appointed the month of February 2014 as the Engraving month in El Salvador. In Bajo Presión 2015, 36 artists met, among them students, as on previous occasions, in order to support talented young Salvadorans to forge their careers in art.

In 2016, the activity is carried out for the fourth consecutive year and the number of participants grows, being 44 artists and students, the technique that was worked on that occasion was Chalcography and Drypoint and the engravings were mostly illuminated. Another important aspect that all the editions of Bajo Presión have is that the collection of engravings after its official presentation travel and are exhibited throughout El Salvador to bring art to the public. Has performed more than 80 individual and collective exhibitions And his work is found in different private collections in countries such as Japan, Denmark, Colombia, the United States, Chile, Brazil, Guatemala, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, Tunisia, El Salvador, Canada, South Africa, Portugal, among others. And belongs to the Asociación de Artistas Plásticos de El Salvador.