Francisco (Paco) León was born in Santiago de Chile in 1972. A year later, his family moved to Stockholm, Sweden. After spending 5 years there, he returned to his native country, but he continued visiting the European country frequently until 2005 when his father moved back to Chile.
At age 18, Paco traveled to the United States and studied Science of Creative Intelligence (CIC) at Maharishi University. There, he started painting in the free time his job and studies allowed him.
Upon his return, he decided to devote himself to painting and studied an additional year at the Arcis University. He then embarked in a self-taught endeavor, nurtured by his experiences and an interest in learning through visiting workshops such as La Brocha, a meeting and creation place of the 80s and 90s.
As the godson of artist Hugo Marín, he inherited transcendental meditation as a crucial tool for his development. He actively participated in the artist’s studio, where he gained and applied his knowledge.
He lived in Valparaíso, where he pursued painting, and in 1996 he moved back to Santiago to hold his first exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), a milestone that kick-started his professional artistic career.
To cultivate himself, Paco has participated in several collective workshops such as La Brocha, Generador, Taller Tuna and Taller Italia, where he’s spent time with celebrated national artists. He has also organized local visual arts events as an artist who’s “swimming against the tide”, as he coined himself.
Paco finds his pictorial language in landscapes and abstraction, futuristic and tribal elements. The journal El Mercurio once described him as “a futuristic ethnic painter.”
Painting is his favorite technique but he has also tried his hand at print-making, photography, collage, sculpture, drawing and editorial work through his collage and poetry project “Polo sur-do.”
His work has been exhibited in several samples in both Chile and abroad, in countries like China, Korea, USA, Venezuela, Paraguay, Uruguay and Peru. Moreover, his pieces are part of several private, corporate and public collections incluiding Chiloé’s Museum of Modern Art (MAM), the University of Talca (UTAL), Compañía Cervecerías Unidas (CCU), UBS Switzerland AG, Almagro Constructora, Polincay, South Cone Investment Advisor (CDC IXIS), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).