Two Gentlemen Of The Colonia: Andrew Klein And Rafael Franco

By Randolph Rogers

The two gentlemen whom I refer to are men who have contributed greatly to the fabric of San Miguel de Allende, and specifically to Colonia San Antonio. Their contributions prove that one can make a difference at any stage of life. Fortunately for San Migue, they chose this place, and we are all the beneficiaries. In many ways, they’ve led parallel lives, but that’s where the similarities end. Their journeys were very different, but the common thread is their love of history, art, and culture. They were both born in Europe: Rafael Franco in 1948 in Córdoba, Spain, and Andrew Klein in 1940 in Debrecen, Hungary. They both emigrated to the United States: Rafael to Los Angeles, and Andrew to Chicago. They both eventually settled in San Miguel, focusing on projects in San Antonio. Rafael at the bottom of Stirling Dickinson with his complex, including the Hotel Kubo, Trina Cantina restaurant, gardens featuring native succulents, and his homage to central México, the Los Arcos Cultural Center. Andrew co-founded the Blue Moon Gallery, San Miguel’s only collaborative art gallery, at the top of Stirling District.

Rafael has a career as an architect and developer that has informed his goal to mentor bilingual architecture students and community builders. He studied architecture at Cal Poly, where he began his outreach, bringing dozens of students to San Miguel, and his cultural center is a working classroom. Outside, one is greeted by the statues of Don Quixote, Miguel Hidalgo, a priest, a teacher, his dog, and a student, and the bright red metal sculpture forming the letters CID for Curiosity, Imagination, and Discovery, which is his mantra. The artwork continues inside with several statues of Franciscan monks, a dragonfly, a whole gallery devoted to Cervantes’ seminal work, and a tribute to Thomas Jefferson. Not to be missed is his collection of 15^th century maps of central México when los Chichimecas inhabited it.

Andrew was sent to a labor camp as a child. His family emigrated to Chicago in 1949. As a Holocaust survivor, his testimony has been recorded by Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation. His fondness for Chicago and its indelible stamp on his growth is evident in his art and his straightforward approach to life.

Andrew moved to Israel in 1968 and returned to Chicago in 1978, where he attended graduate school at the Art School located adjacent to the Art Institute of Chicago. For the next twenty years, he taught college art in St. Louis, while pursuing his passion as a figurative painter. He had traveled to México frequently since 1985 and had always dreamed of retiring here. The dream was fulfilled in 2018 when he became a full-time resident of San Miguel de Allende.

Andrew and Ray Leguizamo co-founded the Blue Moon Gallery in 2021 and will soon celebrate their fifth anniversary. Their original gallery was in a loft at Lavinia's Frames before moving to their permanent home on Stirling Dickinson. The collaborative gallery now has 7 members. The gallery has been embraced by the art community and by the aficionados of original art, and is part of the burgeoning art scene in San Antonio, where Andrew likens the organic growth of the Stirling Dickinson District to the art scene in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York, where artists, galleries, and exhibits found a home.

Los Arcos Cultural Center #28 Stirling Dickinson. Free and open to the public Monday-Friday 8:00 a.m. - 12:00  p.m.

Blue Moon Gallery #7 Stirling Dickinson is open six days a week, Tuesday-Sunday, from 11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. and from 3:00 p.m.-6:00 a.m.

Randolph Rogers, author, splits his time between his home in San Miguel de Allende and Paso Robles, California