Guillermo Wagner Granizo was born in San Francisco in 1923. His mother was from Nicaragua and for 11 years, he lived in Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua as a boy where he began to appreciate ceramics and the freedom of expression of non-traditional art. Following World War II he graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute where he received training in the formal rules of color and design. Granizo devoted all of his energies to the rendering of ceramic tile murals and mosaics with special attention to the creatives uses of color glazes.