Juan Manuel Hernández

Public sources identify Juan Manuel Hernández as a Costa Rican painter born in 1969 in San José, working primarily in painting and pastel on paper. Auction-house lot notes describe recurring subjects drawn from the Costa Rican landscape, among them toucans, mountains, and rainforest scenes, consistent with titles such as Tucanes and Entre montañas. No formal record of art school training has been found in the sources reviewed, and no verified record of national or international awards has been located.

No obituary, gallery memorial statement, or major art-press notice reporting his death has been located as of this profile's date. A Christie's lot listing for this artist includes a provenance note describing a work as acquired directly from the artist, and auction-house descriptions continue to use present-tense language, consistent with treating him as a living artist. On that basis he is treated here as presumed living, though this is an inference from the absence of contrary evidence rather than a direct confirmation.

No verbatim critical commentary from named critics in major art publications has been located for this artist. Auction-house lot notes include promotional descriptive language about the artist, but this is commercial marketing copy rather than independent critical reception, and it is not reproduced here as a quotation.

The best-documented high result for Hernández is USD 107,500 for Camino A Renacer, reported at a Sotheby's sale in New York in May 2011. This figure comes from an aggregated auction-record field rather than a primary sale catalogue, so the exact sale day and lot number have not been independently confirmed. A comparable result, Entre montañas, sold for USD 98,500 at Christie's, New York, in the 26 to 27 May 2010 auction window, and Sombras En El Camino sold for the same USD 98,500 at Sotheby's, New York, in May 2010. Beyond these results, the public auction record for this artist is thin, and individual sales should be treated as data points rather than as evidence of a broad, liquid market.

Several artists share this or a similar name, including the Colombian abstract painter Manuel Hernández (1928 to 2014) and a contemporary Mexican-born, Brooklyn-based painter also known as Manuel Hernandez, and mixing up sale records between them is a real risk when researching this market. Works by this artist have appeared signed both with the full name and with the abbreviated form "J. Manuel Hdez," which is useful for cross-checking signatures against catalogued lots. There is no catalogue raisonne and no confirmed museum permanent-collection holding in the sources reviewed, so provenance and direct confirmation from the selling house or from Galería Valanti in Costa Rica are the most reliable paths to verifying a given work.