Art aficionados had a chance to travel the length of Latin America and see some of its greatest art – all without leaving Barrio Logan.

Latin American Art Fair 2019 dazzled at Bread & Salt, a dynamic contemporary art venue and transborder a multicultural hub. Nuria Bac and her team curated a world-class exhibit of provocative art from many of Latin America’s greatest museums.

Bac collaborated with Latin American art stars Torres Pacheco Triplets, Belen Islas and more than 100 other artists to promote cross-cultural exchange, she said, and promote peace through the arts.

Bac paints fauvist and expressionist works showcasing bold colors with a distinct Mexican style.

She wanted a degree since education was valued in her household, but also to get insight into the concept of a university.

Bac studied law at the Universidad Auótonoma de Baja California in Tijuana, but today she prefers to make her case with art. She brushes aside brushes and paints almost exclusively with her fingers. Her raw and organic aesthetic harnesses unexpected colors that evoke warmth and beauty.

“Smile While You Are Making Me A Sandwich” is a Neo-pop painting of a woman that shows her sadness and anger. She said the painting honors her father, who asked for a lot of things and demanded they be done with a smile.

Women are a favorite subject of Bac, who uses soft feminine lines and bold colors to show the grace, strength and courage of a cancer survivor.

“What you see in my artwork is me,” she said. “Me celebrating after beating the odds, me telling a family story, me after every heartbreak, every hardship, me making Lemonade with lemons. Hence the title of my latest collection: ‘Thanks For the lemonade!’”

Good things come in threes. Great things, too.

Three gifted brothers – Leonel Alfonso, Lorenzo Antonio and Luis Alberto – are known as the Torres Pacheco Triplets. Los hermanos grew up in a low-income family in Nayarit, but later settled in Tijuana. Their artistic talent helped them to survive.

“It was so hard for our parents to make a living and as brothers we helped out to cover part of the family expenses with the drawings that we managed to sell when we were kids,” said Leonel Alfonso.

His brother Lorenzo agreed.

“From childhood we’ve always been attracted to everything that had to do with creating,” he said. “We never cared about spending time with friends, the only thing we wanted to do was to stay at home, grab a piece of paper and drawing while we watched TV in our surroundings”.

Los hermanos were accepted to a scholarship program offered by the Culture Institute Baja California. As a collective of artists, they worked together, but each developed his own techniques and style.

Torres Pacheco Triplets eye-popping painting “La burbuja del arte contemporeano” uses watercolor and colored pencils to embody trade, consumerism and contemporary life in Mexico. Their art represents the cynical romance between capitalism and the art world through an economic lens.

Belen Islas, a co-curator of Latin American Art Fair, grew up surrounded with art supplies because her father was a sculptor who encouraged his daughter to create constantly. In Mexico she studied painting, photography and drawing, then earned a certificate in communications arts at UCLA Extension.

“I’m a student for life, I am always trying to learn new things and improve my skills,” she said. “I depict powerful women as well as symbols of strength, such as the monarch butterfly. Another symbol that appears continuously in my work is transparent birds that represent the freedom of the mind.”

Islas’captivating painting “The Crown” depicts a blue sky with stars flowing around the background as a woman sits with the constellation of a crown over her head and two stars in her hands. It is a message to women that they can be anything in life, including a queen. Women can always make their own crown, she said.

Islas’ surreal paintings rely on acrylic paint and gold leaf. They are colorful and cheerful celebrations repleat with powerful women, birds, flowers, butterflies, space and water.

“In all my paintings I use gold leafs because gold is the only material that doesn’t lose its radiant quality,” she said. “And it is just a reminder that even in the darkest there is always light.”