Gustavo Victor Goler was raised among bultos and retablos.
A child of a Santa Fe-based family of art conservators and restorers from Argentina, Goler apprenticed in the studios the family used for their work. He began his apprenticeship at a very young age, gaining incredible wood-carving skills by helping to restore 200-year-old carvings from throughout Spain’s former empire.
In high school he began carving santos. Santos are a traditional type of religious folk art common especially in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. Typically, a santo is a Catholic saint represented as a painting on a wooden plank (retablo), a carved three-dimensional wooden sculpture (bulto) or within an altar screen (reredo).
