Carlos Llobet Montealegre

Carlos Llobet Montealegre is a Costa Rican artist currently living in Buffalo, New York. He received his BFA (2008) and a Licentiate degree (2015) in printmaking from the University of Costa Rica. During that time Montealegre also worked in commercial screen-printing, designing and producing t-shirts and posters. In 2019, he graduated from the MFA program at the University at Buffalo. He also recently completed a month residency at Kala Institute in Berkley, California.

Montealegre’s work deals mostly with representation of the Costa Rican working class struggling to make a living. This portrayal of street life and social reality comes from his exposure to the economic inequalities in his home town of Escazú and explores the ways the colonial history of Latin America have perpetuated growing income inequality throughout the region.

“The prints are a snapshot of the people who earn a living by doing informal jobs, lottery salespeople, shoe shiners, marimba players and car watchmen among many others. By using this subject matter, I intend to bring to the forefront the plight of the less fortunate who are struggling economically in an ever-increasing world where the gap between the upper class and the lower is widening.” [1]

 In the tradition of Latin American printmaking, he works mostly with relief print, but he also has experience in Serigraphy, Intaglio and Lithography. His work concurrently pushes the boundaries of traditional printmaking by incorporating multiplicity, repetition, collage, painting and weaving of prints. Montealegre has exhibited his works throughout the United States and in Costa Rica. He has been featured in group shows at Villa Maria College (Buffalo, NY), SUNY Alfred College (Alfred, NY), Sugar City (Buffalo, NY) and the University of Dallas (Dallas, TX). In 2019, El Museo (Buffalo, NY) exhibited a solo show of his work, entitled The “Old” New Normal.