Crossing the Delaware | Guillo Pérez 3 | Original Oil Painting

Original oil painting by Guillo Pérez 3 · Contemporary reinterpretation of American historical painting · Dominican-American expressionist · Available at Marcolina’s Fine Arts Gallery, Tampa, Florida · Ships worldwide

Emanuel Leutze painted Washington Crossing the Delaware in 1851. It became one of the most recognized images in American history: a symbol of courage, sacrifice, and the willingness to cross into uncertainty for something worth believing in. For nearly two centuries it has belonged, in the popular imagination, to a particular version of the American story.

Guillo Pérez 3 has studied American history alongside world history for most of his life. As a Dominican-American artist, he arrived at a conviction that matters deeply to him: American history belongs to everyone who contributes to the country's story. Not just to those who were present at the founding, but to every person who has crossed a border, built a life, and added something to what America is still becoming.

This painting is that claim made visible. Guillo does not copy Leutze. He enters the painting, its composition, its drama, its iconic weight, and repaints it from the inside of a contemporary perspective. The courage is the same. The stakes are the same. The people in the boat have always been more than one version of American.

It is a painting that will generate conversation everywhere it hangs for as long as it exists. Every mark in it was made with total commitment, the way Guillo has always painted: from the inside out, with complete conviction, without the possibility of second-guessing what the eye sees.

Collector's Note

Crossing the Delaware represents one of the most ambitious works in Guillo Pérez 3's body of work. It enters a conversation with canonical American painting and holds its ground through sheer painterly authority and the weight of its argument. For collectors building a serious collection of contemporary figurative work, this is a defining acquisition. Its scale, its narrative weight, and its originality make it a work that appreciates in cultural resonance over time.

Acquisition

Available through Marcolina's Fine Arts Gallery with worldwide shipping, full insurance, and professional art packaging. Payment plans available. Private viewings by appointment in Tampa, Florida. Virtual viewings available for collectors anywhere in the world. Contact us to inquire. New to collecting? Read our collector guide →

A standard shipping rate is charged at checkout. Once your work is packed, we calculate the actual shipping cost for its size and destination. If there is a difference, we will follow up to either invoice the additional amount or refund the difference, whichever applies.

About the Artist

Guillo Pérez 3 is a Dominican-American painter, co-founder, educator, and cultural ambassador whose artwork and vision help define the identity of Marcolina’s Fine Arts Gallery. Born in Santo Domingo and raised in Queens, New York, he is the grandson of Maestro Guillo Pérez, one of the Dominican Republic’s most respected painters and a recognized figure in the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program, and the son of master painter Willy Pérez. Three generations of unbroken serious painterly practice. His work hangs in the permanent collection of the Skylands Museum of Art alongside Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso, and is held by private collectors in over 48 countries.

Guillo has painted with severely limited vision since childhood. Like Monet, who painted his Water Lilies series while losing his sight, and Matisse, who created his most celebrated works when illness took him away from the canvas, Guillo’s relationship with sight has become the source of something extraordinary rather than a constraint. Unable to rely on conventional vision, he paints from a place of total interior conviction: from historical knowledge, spiritual formation, and a bodily intelligence built over decades of serious practice. Every mark is a commitment. Every color choice is an act of faith. When he paints, that is when he is seeing.

He grew up in a deeply religious Christian household and has spent a lifetime in serious study of world history, comparative religion, and international affairs. His paintings are not decorative mythologies. They are the work of a man who has read the texts, lived the contradictions, and paints from the inside of those traditions.

In Tampa, he was mentored by the late Theo Wujcik, longtime USF Graphicstudio director whose work is held in the Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection. In 2022, The Straz Center commissioned him for a mural connected to their production of The Little Match Girl, and during the interview their team described him simply as art royalty.

Working from Tampa, Florida, he has developed Bauhaus Budō: a synthesis of Bauhaus design discipline and the meditative rigor of martial arts. His work has been exhibited across the United States, the Caribbean, and Europe. The New York Times recognized him as a “Star Maker.”

Explore the full collection and biography →