 During the 1950s, he was part of the ""Generación de los Cincuentas"" (the Generation of the Fifties), a group of artists who worked to create a new artistic style and aesthetic identity for Puerto Rico.He also spent time in New York on a Guggenheim fellowship, and returned to the city in the 1960s, when he encountered a generation of Puerto Rican artists particularly intent on exploring and celebrating their cultural heritage.Until 1963, he contributed to the Puerto Rico Department of Public Instruction (now the Department of Education) various paintings, posters, and advertisements to help bring government-sponsored literacy and hygiene programs to poor and illiterate communities in Puerto Rico.