HIGHLIGHTS-Art form El Salvador in New York

Art from El Salvador in New York

13th June, 2013

Permanent Mission of El Salvador to the United Nations

Art from El Salvador in New York

It is our pleasure to encourage the artistic Salvadorean presence in an international space and specially in the city of New York, in which all cultures and artistic expressions converge. On this ocassion we have the honor to express our gratitude to Dr. Vanda Pignato, First Lady and Secretary of Social Inclusion of the Replubic of El Salvador, for her vision and support to the spirit of this project; to Mrs. Magdalena Granadino, Secretary of Cultural Affairs of the Republic of El Salvador, for her support and our deep gratitude to Mr. Rob Raylman, Executive Director of Gift of Life International and Mrs. Kaushalya Siriwardana, Founder of Helping Hands Inc., who have made this exhibition possible.

We also would like to thank to the private art collectors who kindly provided loans of artwork for this event, Mr. Moris Angulo, M.D., Mrs. Britta Mazur, M.D. and Mrs. Ana Haskin. Thanks also to Ms. Patricia Letona Álvarez, who produced the photographs and Mr. Emerson Martínez, who made the art design for the catalogue.

Our special gratitude to Dr. Stephen Lamia for having written the foreword accompanying the catalogue as well for his colaboration in developing of this exhibition, and to Arq. Sonia Melara, Attache on Cultural Affairs Attache, Ad-Honorem, for her iniciative to create this event and for her dilligent research of the artworks and artists included and for her editorial assistance with the catalogue. And finally we thank all the Salvadorean artists in this show who built our social and cultural history through their work.

Carlos Enrique Garcia GonzálezAmbassador and Permanent Representative of El Salvador to the United Nations

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

HIGHLIGHTS Art from El Salvador in New York, is part of the Cultural and Social Project “Art Inspiring Action” of the Permanent Mission of El Salvador to the United Nations. This exhibition includes artwork done by recognized Salvadorean artists in and out of our country, and it is a journey from the last days of the first half of the 20th Century to the present.

Artistic influences are visibly different in the visions of every exhibited her. Some originate from the European School as we can see in the work of Miguel Ortiz Villacorta, who is a signature painter of exquisite, bucolic Impressionistic images and Ana María Martínez, whose still lives are reminiscence of the Post-Flemish Renaissance School.The Mexican School inspired the work of José Mejía Vides and Camilo Minero; the latter mentioned artist also evokes Picasso´s and Braque´s Cubism.

Mejía Vides and Minero, both join Carlos Cañas to be honored with the most important recognition in art in El Salvador, the National Cultural Award, in 1976, 1995 and 2012 respectively. Cañas is considered one of the key artist responsible of the Modern Movement in the pictorial arts of El Salvador. Some of the painters in the show developed their trajectory outside the borders of our country, like Salarrué and Ernesto San Avilés. Salarrué spent more than ten years living in the United States, basically in New York, from 1946 to 1958, and San Avilés lived in Paris for half of his entire life.

Meanwhile Salvadorean society of the early 20th Century experienced a transformation from a cultural and agrarian economy trough a civil conflict during the 70´s and 80´s, and César Menéndez perpetuated this convulsive circum-stances in his impressive artwork El Grito in 1981. Each piece in this exhibition tells us a story and we feel honored to invite all of you to see them in the artistic, cultural and social context of the history of El Salvador.

Sonia MelaraAttache on Cultural Affairs Ad-Honorem


INTRODUCTION

The artwork featured in this inaugural exhibition showcases a cross-section of twentieth and early twenty-first century artists active both in El Salvador and in New York. It is interesting to note both the diversity in their styles of visual expression as well as the commonality of subject matter.

For instance, the theme of landscape dominates this show and yet it is treated so differently in each artist’s hand. Miguel Ortiz Villacorta’s Parque Balboa presents us with a skillfully layered and highly detailed approach to the flora leading our eye subtly towards the back-ground. This light-flooded vista is marked by a bright, naturalistic use of color.

In direct contrast, José Mejía Vides’s Salinera employs subjective color, freely presenting us with pink elements for the salt flats and hut and pale blue for the sky. In addition, his diminutive laborers and landscape elements are handled in a simplified and stylized manner, though recognizable nonetheless. The two landscape paintings by Camilo Minero, Paisaje del Parque Balboa and Un-titled, display a nearly monochromatic study in yellows, golds and browns, imparting an autumnal atmosphere whose space is shattered by criss-crossed lines evocative of the Cubist movement pioneered by such masters as Picasso and Braque in the early twentieth century.

The pastoral landscape is eliminated in the work of Armando Solís, Julio Hernández Alemán and Bernardo Crespín and substituted, instead, by the urban streetscape. Solis’s desolate Calles de Adobe, San Miguel is popu-lated by a lone figure of a woman, but the soft pastel colors imbue the scene with an air of serenity. Aleman’s canvas Árbol del Fuego is dominated by its caustic, vivid colors which give the image a feeling of horror vacui, an almost stifling atmosphere wherein all the forms vie with each other for space.

Quite unlike the other two, Crespín’s Covachas is less about architecture and more about laundry drying in the sun. Its palette is largely composed of the comple-mentary colors of orange and blue, and his handling of the brushwork is decidedly Impressionistic in its broken, patch-like application.

The second most popular theme in this exhibition is the human figure, represented by five examples. Vides, who has already been discussed for his landscape painting, depicts a veiled woman carrying a large jug against a vivid floral background in Pancha con Cántaro. This soli-tary figure dominates the painting which is characterized by its bold colors and strong composition. In stark con-trast we see Carlos Cañas’s Untitled; it depicts the soft rendering of a woman wearing a modish hat in light, neutral tones set off against a dark background.

A third artist in this category, César Menéndez, presents us with a most haunting image, that of a howling figure, in El Grito. In its entirety the painting possesses an abs-tract, quasi-Surrealistic aura to it. This canvas leaves the viewer with a disquieting and ominous feeling, thus ma-king it one of the most evocative works in the show. The fourth artist in this group exhibition, Sonia Melara, offers two paintings, both of which contain the female nude. In one, El Nacimiento de Afrodita, she recasts the ancient Greek myth into a Post-Modern idiom, replete with visual references to female sexual anatomy and vivid floral patterns in the background, much like we had noted in Vides’s work, though here the colors are even bolder. In Melara’s other painting, Poker Heart, her signature patterned backdrop now contains miniature spades and hearts, two of the suits in a deck of playing cards that reinforce the title of this work. The overall effect downplays the sense of illusionism and instead, emphasizes the two-dimensional surface.

FEATURED ARTISTSFROM EL SALVADOR

The unmodulated skin tonalities in both nudes recall Edouard Manet’s handling of the human form in such great nineteenth-century milestones as The Fifer, and even more germane to Melara’s subjects, his female nude Olympia.

The iconography of still life is presented by two artists, Ana María Martínez and Ernesto San Avilés who happen to be sister and brother. Ms. Martínez offers us two lus-cious untitled paintings of fruits. One displays ripened oranges with their leaves and the other glistening red, green and black grapes also with their leaves.

The pair of paintings shows both traditional and untra-ditional aspects to them. The two canvases are at once hyper-realistic images of fruits, but their apparent disas-sociation from any specific setting such as an interior or a compote sitting on a table is absent. Instead, the organic shapes seem overblown and reminiscent of the enlarged fruits inserted into the enigmatic early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights in their effect. Her brother Ernesto San Avilés’s Hortensia, offers a pleasant floral arrangement, wherein a cool pa-lette is employed for the exquisite rendering of hydran-geas and vase – all of which are set against a background of pale yellow thus setting before us a subtle contrast of complementary colors.

Taken together, these fifteen works present to the viewer a fine sampling of El Salvadorean painting that encapsulates the major stylistic currents of Modern Art.

Essay by Stephen Lamia, NY, 2013

Stephen Lamia is Professor of Visual Arts and Director of The Honors Program at Dowling College in Oakdale, New York. He has extensive museum, gallery and curatorial experience from a number of institutions in both The United States and Canada. He was Curator of Collec-tions and Special Exhibitions at The McMaster University Art Gallery in Hamilton, Ontario, then Gallery Director at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Imme-diately before his appointment at Dowling College he was Staff Lecturer in the Education Department of The Cloisters, the uptown Manhattan branch of the Medieval Department of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has also served as Guest Curator at The Islip Art Museum in Islip, New York His interests range from the Art of An-cient Egypt to cutting-edge Contemporary Art.

Some of his curatorial projects include Thanatopsis: Images of Death in the Graphic Arts of Northern Europe, Egypt: The Source and the Legacy, Hot and Cool: The Iconogra-phy of Abstraction. At Dowling College’s Anthony Gior-dano Gallery he has co-curated over fifty exhibitions with Ms. Pam Brown, Gallery Director.

He holds a B.A. in Studio Art and Art History from the City University of New York, an M. A. from the Institute of Fine Art at New York University and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He currently resides in New York City, his home town.

Conchas en la ArenaSalarrué [1899-1975]Shells in the Sand, 1950Oil on Canvas19 3/4” x 16”

Miguel Ortiz Villacorta [1887-1963]Balboa ParkOil on canvas30”x 20”

Parque Balboa6

José Mejía Vides [1903-1990]Pancha with VesselOil on canvas28”x 32”

Pancha con Cántaro7

José Mejía Vides [1903-1990]SaltworkOil on canvas30”x 20”

Salinera8

Camilo Minero [1917-2005]Balboa Park Landscape, 1976Piroxilina on wood32”x 49”

Paisaje del Parque Balboa9

Camilo Minero [1917-2005]Piroxilina on woodUntitled, 197724”x 20”

Sin Título10

Carlos Cañas [1924-2013]Untitled, 1972-73Pastel and ink on paper21.5”x 29”

Sin Título11

Ernesto San Avilés [1932-1991]Hyndrangea, 1953Oil on canvas19”x 24”

Hortensia12

Ana María Martinez [1937-2012]Theater of Oranges, 1997Oil on canvas10.5”x 13.5”

Teatro de Naranjas13

Ana María Martínez [1937-2012]Still life with Grapes, 1995Oil on canvas10.5”x 13.5”

Bodegón de Uvas14

Armando Solís [b.1940]Streers of Adobe, San Miguel, 1966Oil on canvas24”x 20”

Calles de Adobe, San Miguel15

Julio Hernández Alemán [b.1940]Fire TreeOil on canvas20”x 24”

Árbol de Fuego16

Bernardo Crespín [b.1949]Slums, 1976Oil on canvas26”x 18”

Covachas17

César Menéndez [b.1954]The Scream, 1981Oil on canvas36”x 36”

El Grito18

Sonia Melara [1960]The Birth of Aphrodite, 2007Oil, pastel, gold, silver and copper leaf on museum board40”x 60”

El Nacimiento de Afrodita19

Sonia Melara [1960]Poker Heart, 2010Oil, pastel, gold, silver and copper leaf on museum board40”x 60”

Poker Heart20

Art from El Salvador in New York13th June, 2013

Private Collections

Salarrué [1899-1975]Conchas en la ArenaAna Haskin

Carlos Cañas [1924-2013]Sin TítuloPrivate collection, New York

Ana María Martínez [1937-2012]Teatro de Naranjas, Bodegón de UvasDr. Moris Angulo and Dr. Britta Mazur, New York

Sonia Melara [1960]El Nacimiento de Afrodita, Poker HeartPrivate Collection, New York

Art Collection of the Permanent Mission of El Salvador to the United Nations

Miguel Ortiz Villacorta [1887-1963]Parque Balboa

José Mejía Vides [1903-1990]Pancha con Cántaro, Salinera

Camilo Minero [1917-2005]Paisaje del Parque Balboa, Sin Título

Ernesto San Avilés [1932-1991]Hortensia

Julio Hernández Alemán [b.1940]Árbol de Fuego

Bernardo Crespín [1949]Covachas

Armando Solís [1966]Calles de Adobe, San Miguel

César Menéndez [1954]El Grito


Exhibition Layout

Catalogue

Carlos Enrique García GonzálezAmbassador

Stephen Lamia, New YorkText and Editing

Sonia Melara, New YorkEditor

Sonia Melara

Stephen Lamia

Raymond Moreno, El SalvadorBeatriz Clará de Vassil, New York Text Translator

Sonia MelaraAttache on Cultural Affairs Ad- Honorem

Michelle Patiño Peña, Buenos Aires Design Assistant

Emerson Martínez, El SalvadorArt Design

Openanddesign.com, El SalvadorPrinting

Patricia Letona Álvarez, New YorkMoris Angulo (Ana María Martínez), New YorkPhotograpy

HIGHLIGHTS-Art form El Salvador in New York

Documents

Transcript of HIGHLIGHTS-Art form El Salvador in New York