FLORENCIO MOLINA CAMPOS (1891-1959)

On October the third, 1891, in the Buenos Aires parish of San Nicolás, Eduardo O’Gorman – brother of the famous Camila – baptized with the name Florencio de los Ángeles the man who we know today as Florencio Molina Campos. He was the son of Florencio Molina Salas and Josefina del Corazón de Jesús Campos y Campos.

From an early age he drew landscapes, country people, and  scenes of country life that he had observed and recorded during his school vacations at his father’s family ranch, “Los Angeles” in El Tuyú, and later at “La Matilde”, a ranch leased by his family in Chajarí, Entre Ríos.

After his father’s death, in 1907, he had to take jobs at the Post Office, the Sociedad Rural Argentina, and the Department of Public Works. His efforts to achieve independence first as a cattle dealer and later on a farm in the Chaco were doomed to failure.

In 1926, at the age of thirty-five, encouraged by a friend, he exhibited a number of drawings and paintings at the annual exposition in the Central Hall of the Sociedad Rural. President Alvear visited the show and bought two of Molina Campos’ works.

The next year, he exhibited in the old Rambla, in Mar del Plata, where he met María Elvira Ponce Aguirre, who later became his second wife.

From 1931 to 1944 he produced calendar illustrations for the Fábrica Argentina de Alpargatas, and these are now considered his best and most important paintings.

Walt Disney, an admirer of Molina Campos’ work, hired him as an adviser on several films, but the results did not satisfy the artist, who saw that the image of the Argentine gaucho was being debased.

His illustrations for Estanislao del Campo’s Fausto, published by Kraft, are unforgettable. From 1944 to 1958 he illustrated calendars for the Minneapolis-Moline farm machinery manufacturer. These calendars became famous throughout the United States, where he lived for many years.

Florencio Molina Campos, born in Buenos Aires on the twenty-first of August 1891, died in the city of his birth on the sixteenth of November 1959.

Text based in Juan Carlos Ocampo (1938-2006) ´s biography included in the book Molina Campos,
edited by the Asociación Amigos de las Artes Tradicionales.