Salvador LORETO

Salvador Flores Loreto was born in Algeciras, Spain in 1942, and raised a 'pure gypsy' in a gitano (gypsy) family. Due to discrimination against gypsies, he never attended school but at an early age began to pursue his family tradition of flamenco music and bullfighting. He practiced under the name "el Gitanillo de Algeciras" as a bullfighter but after a nasty bullfighting accident at fifteen years old, he returned to his early passion in music and painting. He studied briefly in various art schools in Algeciras, Madrid and Bilbao, undertaking multiple major public art commissions and later exhibited as a solo artist.

In 1966, Loreto arrived in Australia, discovering a new landscape, people, and a freedom of expression. One of the highlights of his career was to twice have the privilege of painting the portrait of the late Honourable Don Dunstan AC QC (b. 1926 – d. 1999) former Premier of South Australia in 1998. Don Dunstan was a popular politician, who during his premiership socially transformed the State. Among his many reforms he encouraged and oversaw a flourishing of the arts. Dunstan was a collector of Loreto’s works and considered Loreto a pure and great artist whose work was relevant to everyday life.  He happily agreed to sit for him. These paintings now have great historic significance in South Australia, as they are the only known portraits in existence that Dunstan sat for before his death. One portrait was entered in the Archibald Competition in 1993 and the second (this portrait) was completed shortly before the late Premier’s untimely death in 1999.

During his long and varied career Loreto has exhibited in Europe and Japan and in Australia - in Perth, Sydney and Adelaide. 

Loreto said,

“I see myself as an honest artist, I am inspired by the human spirit. I express myself in different styles, always with a touch of surrealism which all good Spanish artists are unable to resist.”