Lola Fernández Caballero painted Return of the Ancestor in 1967 while she was still an active member of the Grupo Ocho. Like other artists from this important group in Costa Rica, Fernández was among the first in San José’s provincial context to embrace abstraction and to introduce non-figurative elements into their compositions, often with mixed results. Return of the Ancestor, however, is a solid example of Fernández’s informalist period and, as such, it is emblematic of a range of abstract (and semi-figurative) approaches emerging not just in Costa Rica but across Latin America at the time. They had in common dense application of pigment, accumulative matter, improvisation, and a highly gestural technique. Unlike Fernández’s other monochromatic works from this period, the painting combines shades of white, black, gray, blue, red, and yellow in an aesthetically pleasing composition. Irrespective of any literal associations that may be suggested by the title Return of the Ancestor, Fernández has stated of this and other abstract works from the 1960s that their meaning is open to individual interpretation. However, themes such as the emotional charge of the Costa Rican landscape and geography, and a consistent experimentation with color saturations were recurrent elements in her works. Despite her many accomplishments, today Lola Fernández is not well known outside of Costa Rica. Yet, during the late 1960s through the early 1980s she was regularly included in national representations and individual exhibitions abroad. In fact, along with Francisco Zúñiga, she was the Costa Rican artist who most frequently exhibited at what was then the gallery of the Pan American Union in Washington, D.C. Born in Cartagena, Colombia, Lola Fernández Caballero moved to Costa Rica with her parents at a young age. She began her studies in 1941 at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas (Universidad de Costa Rica) in San José under artists that included Francisco Amiguetti. Between 1949 and 1950, Fernández completed courses in fresco and oil painting at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Bogotá. A subsidy from the Italian government allowed her to attend a graduate course (Laurea in Pittura) at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence from 1954 to 1958. While living in Italy, Fernández traveled throughout Europe, Morocco, and the Middle East. In 1961, UNESCO awarded her a grant that funded a study trip to Japan, India, China, and what was then Indochina. These experiences initially skewed her towards informalism, the catch-all midcentury style encompassing many of the predominantly European gestural trends that developed concurrent to North American abstract expressionism. By the 1960s, however, her range also included geometric abstraction and neo-figuration. Irrespective of style, many of Fernández’s works are characterized by a balance of form and color, utilizing them along with texture and painterly gesture to portray emotion. And, her work consistently attests to techniques that she acquired during her travels to Europe and the Far East. In Costa Rica, Fernández is credited with having been at the forefront of a localized mode of artistic expression reflecting nationalistic values and is noted for having been the first artist to exhibit abstract art in the country with a one-person show at San José’s Museo Nacional in 1958. Beginning in 1962, she was part of Grupo Ocho (est. 1961), the collective established by a number of artists—“Felo” García, Manuel de la Cruz González, Luis Fael, and César Valverde among them—that introduced Costa Rican audiences to abstractions through a series of provocative exhibitions.