Carlos Capelán

After two years hitch-hiking across South America, he returns to Montevideo in 1970 and opens a weaving studio. In 1971, his studio is raided five times by police and military. In 1972, he moves to the island of Chiloé in Chile where he works with peasant cooperatives as a weaving technician. In 1973, he is detained and disappeared during the military coup. He reappears in the Estadio Nacional among a group of 54 Uruguayans rescued by the Swedish Ambassor to Chile, Harald Edenstam. As a result, he ends exiled in Sweden and settles in Lund where he still keeps a studio.

He starts studying at Grafikskolan Forum in 1978 and opens his first solo show at Andres Tornberg Gallery. Between 1980 and 1981 he lives in Mexico where he leads courses at the studio of Uruguayan artist Anhelo Hernández. In 1981, back in Lund, he opens a print-making studio together with Carl Gustafsson and Stefan Sjöberg.

In 1986, he receives one of the awards at the third Havana Biennial. He returns to Havana in 1989 to hold several seminaries and lectures at the Instituto Superior de las Artes (ISA) and again in 1994 as celebrated artist of the fifth Havana Biennial.

In 1996 he discotinues working with his galleries in Germany, Colombia, Spain and France, and moves with his family to Costa Rica where he will live until 2001. During tha period he starts a close collaboration with Virginia Pérez-Ratton, at the time the Director of the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo and later founder of the [https://teoretica.org/?lang=en Fundación Teorética]. From Costa Rica he moves to Santiago de Compostela, Spain where he will live until 2006. He moves back to Lund and then, in 2010 to Montevideo. Capelán moves back to Lund in 2013, where he still resides.

From 2000 to 2006 he is Professor at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway. In 2007 he is artist in residence at Auckland University of Technology.

Capelán has participated, among others, in the biennials of Venice (Italy), São Paulo (Brazil), Kwang-ju (Korea), Johannesburg (South Africa), Site Santa Fe (USA), Auckland (New Zealand), MERCOSUR (Brazil), Bienal del Barro (Venezuela) and Bienal Paiz (Guatemala).

He has been awarded the prize of the Third Havanna Biennial, the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995, the National Prize Award in Uruguay in 2013 and The Swedish Royal Academy Prize among others.

Professor at the Art Academy in Bergen, Norway, between (2000-2006) and a guest professor at the Art Academy in Oslo teaching as well in New Zealand, Italy, Cuba, Spain, China, Sweden, Colombia, China, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Mexico, Spain, and Uruguay. Provided by Wikipedia