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Puerto Rican painter Augusto Marin dies at 89

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Augusto Marin, one of Puerto Rico’s best-known painters and muralists, has died. He was 89.

Marin, whose work is found throughout Puerto Rico, from museums to the wall of a suburban shopping center, died Thursday at a hospital in San Juan of complications from a lung infection, said Ivelisse Marin, his daughter. He had been hospitalized since Sunday.

Gov. Luis Fortuno ordered flags on the island lowered to half-staff for three days to mark the death of an artist considered among the leading Puerto Rican painters.

Marin had a long artistic career but was best known for large paintings and murals in the modern style that blended Caribbean and religious elements, said Jose Alegria, director of San Juan’s Obra gallery. “All the top collectors (in Puerto Rico) have a painting of his,” Alegria said.

His murals adorn public and private buildings around Puerto Rico, including a shopping center near the island’s main airport and a condominium complex in the tourist zone of Isla Verde.

Born Nov. 20, 1921 in San Juan, Marin studied art as a child. While serving in the Army during World War II, he published a comic strip in an island newspaper about the experiences of a Puerto Rican soldier and his daily life in the military, according to a biography posted on his website. Later, he studied in New York and Los Angeles, where he specialized in mural design, before returning to Puerto Rico.

He served as a professor of painting and design at the School of Fine Arts of the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture in San Juan, and as a professor at the University of Puerto Rico’s Carolina campus, according to the website.