Jorge Velarde is a Contemporary Latin American painter from Ecuador. Velarde has been drawing and painting since he was a child. At the age of 15 Velarde knew that he was meant to be a painter.

Velarde is a co-founder of Artefactoría, a group of artists that began working together in 1982 after graduating from the School of Fine Arts in Guayaquil

Guayaquil

Guayaquil , officially Santiago de Guayaquil , is the largest and the most populous city in Ecuador,with about 2.3 million inhabitants in the city and nearly 3.1 million in the metropolitan area, as well as that nation's main port...

. Artefactoría primarily consists of Velarde, Marcos Restrepo

Marcos Restrepo

Marcos Restrepo Restrepo is a Latin American painter who is a member of the artist group Artefactoría, founded by Xavier Patiño. Artefactoría formed in 1982 by a group of painters from the School of Fine Arts in Guayaquil who are inspired by the surrealists and the unconscious...

, Pedro Dávila, Xavier Patiño, Marco Alvarado, Flavio Álava, Paco Cuesta, as well as, Cuban artists Saidel Brito and Lupe Alvarez. The artists of Artefactoría are inspired by both Modernism and Surrealism, focusing on a divorce from reality and a love for the unconscious and fantasy.

In 1985, Velarde's participation with the group was put on hold after his marriage to Anabela Garcez and his move to Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 to study cinema. While Velarde is passionate about cinema he quickly realized that it was not for him and so he returned to his love of painting. Velarde is both known for his portraits and his more contemporary art works. His portraits have often portrayed his wife as the subject. Velarde has held numerous exhibitions throughout Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

 and Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

.

Selective individual exhibitions

• 2004 Galería Todo Arte. Guayaquil, Ecuador.
• 2004 Mijares Art Gallery, Miami,FL, USA.
• 2003 Museo Municipal de Arte Moderno. Cuenca, Ecuador.
• 2003 Universidad Católica. Guayaquil, Ecuador
• 2001 Galería DPM. Guayaquil, Ecuador.
• 2000 Galería Municipal Pancho Fierro. Lima, Perú.
• 2000 Galería Madeleine Hollaender. Guayaquil, Ecuador.
• 2000 La Galería. Quito, Ecuador
• 1998 La Casa de las Galerías. Cuenca, Ecuador.
• 1996 La Galería. Quito, Ecuador.
• 1995 Museo Antropológico del Banco Central del Ecuador .Guayaquil, Ecuador
• 1994 Galería La Manzana Verde. Guayaquil, Ecuador.
• 1993 Galería Madeleine Hollaender. Guayaquil, Ecuador.
• 1992 Galería La Manzana Verde. Quito, Ecuador.
• 1992 Galería La Manzana Verde. Guayaquil, Ecuador