Ernesto Cardenal
Religious Leader
Nicaraguan priest, politician and poet who founded the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands.
Although he was born in Granada, Nicaragua he spent much of is youth studying in New York and traveling through Italy, Spain and Switzerland between 1949 and 1950.
He served as the Nicaraguan Minister of Culture from 1979 to 1987.
He was born into an upper-class Nicaraguan family and had a cousin, Pablo Antonio Cuadra, who was also a poet.
He resided at the Trappist Monastery of Gethsemani under the leadership of fellow priest and poet, Thomas Merton, during the 1950s.