Biography

Painter, draftsman, and teacher. In Ponce, Pou studied drawing under Pedro Clausells and painting under Spaniard Santiago Meana. After graduation from the Instituto Provincial de Puerto Rico he became a teacher. In 1910, he established an art school in Ponce, which he directed for forty years. In 1919 he studied at the Art Students League in New York and in 1935 at the Fine Arts Academy in Philadelphia. Along with Ramón Frade and Juan Rosado, he was one of Puerto Rico’s most important realist painters of the first half of the twentieth century. His work has been recognized in Puerto Rico, the United States, and Paris, and his students include Horacio Castaing, Rafael Ríos Rey, and Luis Quero Chiesa. In 2006, the Ponce Art Museum organized an exhibition that traveled to the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts; the exhibition included Pou’s work as well as works by Francisco Oller and José Campeche. The influence of Impressionism may be seen in the importance Pou gave light and color in his paintings. He called himself a patriotic artist and he insisted that his work reflects the soul of Puerto Rico—the country people, the “salt of the earth”—and the true features of its landscape.