Roberto Juarez

Large Colorful 1983 Neo Expressionist Roberto Juarez Oil Painting Tron Family

1983

Diego Barboza - 1945-2003 Hand signed and dated 1988 Oil on Canvas Diego Barboza was born the Carabobo street of Maracaibo, Venezuela on February 4, 1945. He was a Venezuelan Neo Figurative Painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in Venezuelan art history. Diego Barboza opened a new chapter in Latin America, beyond the surreal or the magical realism of the Modern Latin American Masters. He created a new language of dislocation and transgression. Personages became distorted to the point that was very exaggerated forms His figures twisted and contorted without losing their presence or their pull. Extremities muscles, and bones burst into an explosive compound of divergent and convergent lines. Through eruptive brushstrokes and fractured outlines. Barboza created a world of illusions. Barboza was born into a upper-middle-class family. He stopped going to school at 12 years old, and he registered himself at the School of Visual Art in the City of Maracaibo Venezuela. Barboza studied at the School of Visual Arts in Caracas, Venezuela. Barboza began his training as an artist at age 12 in his native Maracaibo when he left formal education to enroll in the then School of Plastic Arts of Zulia, then Julio Arraga School of Plastic Arts, where he was a student in the modeling, collage and Drawing of Angelina Curiel. His first collages, in the sixties, show the influence of American Pop Art. In 1967 he exhibited at the Ateneo de Caracas his series 'Los Ratones', a proposal then 'criticized by critics as unprecedented in Venezuela'. In his tribute to the film "Nosferatu" Friedrich Murnau included 32 drawings as well as two-dimensional objects. In 1968 he moved to London where he studied at the London College of Printing. From that time is his '30 Girls with Nets', an action in which 30 students of the London College of Printing, dressed in black and covered by white nets, toured London public places, behaving naturally. His 'street expressions', which he later called 'poetic actions', symbolized a breakdown of social restraints through unusual behaviors that sought to provoke public reactions. Upon his return to Venezuela in 1973, Barboza continues with this line of work, being recognized as one of the initiators of Venezuelan conceptual art. In the 1980's Diego Barboza turned to painting, the New Venezuelan Figuration. Here belongings and the feminine figure fill the work of that time, in which he embodied his intimacy and daily life through scenes of furnishings and flowers that included objects from his workshop and home. His nudes were made from live model, then to follow the path of distortion resulting in their unmistakable females: a figure that represented their personal way of appreciating beauty. Barboza presented his first individual exhibition at the Centro de Bellas Artes of Maracaibo Venezuela. In 1963, he traveled to London when the Conceptual Art movement started, he had the support of the London New Art Lab Gallery. On March 7, 1970 Barboza displayed his first work on Conceptual Art, which he called Art of Action. In London with the performance of 30 Girls with nets (30 Muchachas con redes). His second work was Nets and Hats in markets and restaurants (Con sombreros y redes en mercados y restaurantes). In London UK. His third The Centerpiece (El Ciempies) and the fourth Expression on a laundry-mat (Expresiones en una lavandería) In 1974. Baboza returned to Venezuela. Where he presented two very important Conceptual Art works: The Armadillo Box (La Caja del Cachicamo) and from the School of Athens to the New School of Caracas (De la Escuela de Atenas a la Nueva Escuela de Caracas). Closing his cycle of Conceptual Art creation. IN Venezuela a sort of impromptu academy started up at Claudio Perna’s house. Eugenio Espinoza, Roberto Obregón, Antonieta Sosa, Alfred Wenemoser, Yeni and Nan, Sigfredo Chacón, Diego Barboza, Luis Villamizar, Margherita D’Amico, Pedro Terán, Alfredo del Mónaco, as well as international figures who happened to be visiting Venezuela such as Antoni Muntadas, Charlotte Moorman, and Roman Polanski would gather there. Venezuela, especially Caracas, was a rich field of action for modernism in South America. Venezuelan Geometric Abstraction, Op art and Kinetic Art dominated through crucial figures like Jesús Rafael Soto, Gego, Alejandro Otero, and Carlos Cruz Diez, the country’s kinetic art made a fundamental contribution internationally. The Greater London Arts Association and the Arts Council of Great Britain did several exhibitions of (North, Central, South, London, Wales, Scotland and Ulster) to show the actual Visual Arts in all of the United Kingdom and Diego Barboza was invited for this event with a solo exhibition, expressions around a cylinder (Expresiones alrededor de un cilindro). Diego has made numerous solo and group exhibitions, obtaining rewards since 1963. He is represented in the most important museums of Venezuela, as well as in England, Brazil, Colombia and Cuba. In 1986 he was awarded the Municipal Visual Arts Award of the Municipal Council of the Federal District and in 1997 he received the National Prize for Plastic Arts granted by the National Council of Culture, CONAC. Select Group Exhibitions 1964 Ateneo de Caracas, Caracas, Venezuela 1965 Salón Arturo Michelena, Valencia, Venezuela 1968 Salón Oficial Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela 1971 Art Spectrum London, London, Great Britain 1972 Serpentine Gallery, London, Great Britain 1973 Midland Group Gallery, London, Great Britain 1974 Galería BANAP, Caracas, Venezuela 1975 Casa de Las Américas, La Habana, Cuba Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas Galería de Arte Nuevo, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1976 Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Sao Paulo, Brazil Museo de la Tertulia, Cali, Colombia Bienal de Venecia, Venecia, Italy 1979 Centro de Artes y Comunicación, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1980 Galería NBC, Memphis, Tennessee, USA 1981 Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Medellín, Colombia Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela 1986 Museo de Arte La Rinconada, Caracas, Venezuela 1989 Galería Venzor, Chicago, Illinois, USA 1990 Museo Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile, Chile 1992 Ambrosino Gallery, Coral Gables, Florida, USA 1993 Museo de Arte de Petare, Caracas, Venezuela Centro de Arte Lia Bermúdez, Maracaibo, Venezuela 1994 Galería Namia Mondolfi, Caracas, Venezuela 1995 Galería Art Nouveau, Maracaibo, Venezuela Galería Cesar Sassòn, Caracas, Venezuela Maremares Resort, Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela Galería Durban, Caracas, Venezuela Galería Odalys, Caracas, Venezuela 1996 Centro de Arte Grupo Li, Caracas, Venezuela Galería Uno, Caracas, Venezuela Centro Cultural Consolidado, Caracas, Venezuela Espacios Unión, Caracas, Venezuela Hebraica, Caracas, Venezuela 1997 Sociedad Dramática, Maracaibo, Venezuela, Venezuela CELARG, Caracas, Venezuela Galería Ocre Arte, Caracas, Venezuela Museo de Arte Contemporáneo , Maracay, Venezuela Galería Medicci, Caracas, Venezuela Awards 1963 Premio Estímulo - IX Salón d’Empaire, Maracaibo, Venezuela 1964 Premio José Ortìn Rodríguez - X Salón d’Empaire, Maracaibo, Venezuela 1965 Primer Premio de Dibujo - III Salón Pez Dorado, Caracas, Venezuela 1968 Premio Henrique Otero Vizcarrondo - XXIV Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano Museo de Bellas Artes, 1973 Premio Emilio Boggio...

MICHAEL HAFFTKA "The Wave" Hand signed lower right "Hafftka" Oil and pastel on paper, 30.5" x 22.25". Framed 39" x 31.5". Michael Hafftka (born 1953) is an American figurative exp...

Matthias Alfen’s series of Janus figures are an innovation in figural art predicated on the advances made by the Futurist sculptor and painter Umberto Boccioni and the Modernist Alberto Giacometti. The qualities of chance and spontaneity, necessarily excluded in the sculptural work, are clearly evident in his drawings and paintings. “Psychograms” of unchoreographed hand movements display wide variation, repeatedly playing through one form after another. In the end, this multitude of variation serves to enhance the logic, consistency, and seductively rich appearance of Alfen’s designed sculptural works. Represented by Gallery Schuckin in New York, Paris, France, and Moscow, Russia. Matthias Alfen’s was strongly influenced by his family’s experience during World War II. His grandfather Klemens Alfen (1894-1955) was an accomplished painter and photographer, recognized for his landscape photography and for his technique (Special Honors for Excellence in Photo-Print Technology, 1932). He enjoyed the friendship and support of many in the artistic community, a community largely influenced by its German Jewish members. Having lost his entire circle of friends under Nazi oppression. Klemens, although not Jewish, also suffered under the Nazis for refusing to join them and struggling in post-war Germany, which had nothing to offer an artist like him, Klemens took his own life. At around the age of 16 he worked for some weeks as an assistant at his uncle’s art studio. Fritz Koenig...

Richard Marshall Merkin (American, 1938-2009) Gladys and Half-Pint Hand signed 'Merkin' (center right), Titled, inscribed, dated, and initialed 'GLADYS BENTLEY AND FRANKIE 'HALF-PINT' JAXON 1997/R.M.' verso. Oil on canvas 37 1/2 x 72 in. (95.3 x 182.9 cm) framed 39 1/4 x 74 x 2 in. Gladys Alberta Bentley (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960) was an American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance. Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a well-known gay speakeasy in New York in the 1920s, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tailcoat and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience. On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player" and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs". She was frequently harassed for wearing men's clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married, claiming to have been "cured" by taking female hormones. Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon, born Frank Devera Jackson was an African American vaudeville singer, stage designer and comedian, popular in the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, orphaned, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname of "Half Pint" referred to his 5'2" height. He started in show business around 1910 as a singer in Kansas City, before travelling extensively with medicine shows in Texas, and then touring the eastern seaboard. His feminine voice and outrageous manner, often as a female impersonator, established him as a crowd favorite. By 1917 he had begun working regularly in Atlantic City, New Jersey and in Chicago, often with such performers as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, whose staging he helped design. He served slightly less than a year in the United States Army in 1918–1919 and rose to the rank of sergeant. In the late 1920s he sang with top jazz bands when they passed through Chicago, working with Bennie Moten, King Oliver, Freddie Keppard and others. He performed and recorded with the pianists Cow Cow Davenport, Tampa Red and "Georgia Tom" Dorsey, recording with the latter pair under the name of The Black Hillbillies. He also recorded with the Harlem Hamfats. In the 1930s, he was often on radio in the Chicago area, and led his own band, titled Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon and His Quarts of Joy. Jaxon appeared with Duke Ellington in a film short titled Black and Tan (1929), and with Bessie Smith in "St. Louis Blues" (1929). Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" (1931) is based both musically and lyrically on Jaxon's "Willie the Weeper" (1927). Richard Merkin, Sometimes described as Rhode Island’s most famous New York artist, Richard Merkin has led a dual life for nearly 40 years - teaching at RISD while enjoying a celebrated painting career based in New York City. He has exhibited in countless gallery and museum shows in the US and abroad and is represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the RISD museum and many others. In addition to contributing drawings and paintings to The New Yorker (along with, Art Spiegelman, Saul Steinberg, Harper’s, The New York Times Sunday Magazine and several books on Erotica and Baseball, he is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a former style columnist for GQ. Merkin’s honors include a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship and the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Museums and Selected Collections : The American Federation of Arts, New York, NY Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA First city Bank, Chicago, Ill Fisk University Art Gallery, Nashville, TN Hallmark Collections, Kansas City, MO Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA Maimi-Dade Junior College, Miami, FL Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI Minnesota Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, RI McClung Museum, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN Pennsylvania Acadamy of the Arts, Philadelphia PA Prudential Insurance Company, Boston, Ma Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, NJ Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA Sara Robey Foundation, New York, NY Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC State University of Brockport, Brockport, NY Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Selected Publications : 1986-Present Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair ..1988-Present, New Yorker... 1988-Present, style column, GQ...1997, Text and Illustration for The Tijuana Bibles, published by Simon & Shuster, 1995, Illustrated book, Leagues Apart: the Men and Times of the Negro Baseball Leagues published by Morrow. 1967 Cover of the Beatles “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” Album (Mr. Merkin appears in the back row, right of center) RISD: MFA in Painting, 1963; Professor, Department of Painting special skill: Merging his role as flaneur (connoisseur of city life) with his role as painter and social historian, Merkin retrieves lost cultural artifacts – a Turkish cigarette, a gangster, a bowler and generally “things most people don’t know about” – and reconstitutes their Jazz Age virtues on canvas in cubist, comic-laced landscapes of tropical color. (ala Robert Crumb and Ben Katchor) breaking in: Perpetually on the fly from his middle-class Brooklyn background, Merkin found the perfect escape in the mid ‘60s in George Frazier, a dapper Boston columnist who inspired the emerging New York painter’s overnight reinvention of himself. The elements of structure, stability and surprise he admired in this well-dressed dandy – a cool linen suit, a splash of suspender, a polka dot scarf and pearl-handled walking stick – soon surfaced in paintings peopled by impeccable underdogs of café society along with his personal pop heroes: William Burroughs, Bobby Short and Krazy Kat...

ANASTASIA PELIAS was born in New Orleans, LA to Greek parents. Her artistic practice is rooted in the dual cultural identity of both her native and ancestral roots in New Orleans, LA...

ANASTASIA PELIAS was born in New Orleans, LA to Greek parents. Her artistic practice is rooted in the dual cultural identity of both her native and ancestral roots in New Orleans, LA...

ANASTASIA PELIAS was born in New Orleans, LA to Greek parents. Her artistic practice is rooted in the dual cultural identity of both her native and ancestral roots in New Orleans, LA...

ANASTASIA PELIAS was born in New Orleans, LA to Greek parents. Her artistic practice is rooted in the dual cultural identity of both her native and ancestral roots in New Orleans, LA...