at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, and during these years he was invited to Russia, China, Japan and India, countries where he exhibited his works. Exile in Costa Rica Once back in Chile, after the 1973 coup d'état that initiated the military dictatorship, the painter fled into self-exile, settling in San José, capital of Costa Rica. During his absence, part of Escámez's work was abandoned, deteriorated or destroyed. In 1974 a mural of his in the session hall of the municipality of Chillán was covered with paint, being censored by the military of his country. The following year, the old Enrique Molina Garmendia High School was demolished, and with it his fresco El hombre ante el micro y macrocosmos was destroyed. His murals Historia de la medicina y la farmacia en Chile (History of Medicine and Pharmacy in Chile) and Historia de Lota (History of Lota) were damaged when people without the necessary skills and knowledge tried to restore them. In Costa Rica, the artist has worked since 1974 as a professor at the School of Plastic Arts of the National University of Costa Rica, located in Heredia, in the subjects of Aesthetics and Graphic Techniques. He is also an ad honorem advisor to the Ministry of Culture for the restoration and conservation of national monuments, carrying out important works and conservation work for the Costa Rican Museum of Art, in addition to dedicating himself to the performing arts, taking up a discipline he had already experimented with in Concepción, highlighting his stagings of works by Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare and Bocaccio Casona, as well as others carried out for the National Ballet of Costa Rica. In addition, Escámez works as an illustrator and art theorist for university publications and books by various authors. Work Style The work of Julio Escámez belongs to the current of realism with a strong social content, dealing with themes of popular everyday life and the American landscape. Some of his works, such as the mural located in Concepción Historia de la medicina y la farmacia en Chile (1957-1958) belong to the so-called social realism, initiated in that area by Gregorio de la Fuente, but replacing the symbolism used by De la Fuente with a more descriptive and anecdotal style. Some of his large-format oil paintings, on the other hand, are influenced by magical realism. His mural painting is strongly influenced by Mexican