Pablo Helguera

Prefer Dead Artists

2009

Pablo Helguera is a visual and performance artist whose work weaves together personal and historical narratives in the context of socially engaged art and language. Previous itineran...

Regarded as an early exponent of politically committed realism in Spain, he left Francoist Spain for Paris at age 21. He dominated the major post-Franco exhibition of Spanish Art at...

Marcel Dzama Even More Friends of Jason, including Dzama, from the Estate of Jason Polan, double sided work with self portrait on the back, 2019 Mixed media collage with ink, waterco...

The Magicians Message From Cuevas' Comedies. Screenprint with collage additions and five lithographs from a portfolio of ten lithographs (one with screenprint and embossing, one with embossing) and five screenprints (two double-sided, one with collage additions). Pencil signed and dated 1971, edition 84/100, blindstamp visible, published by Collector's Press, San Francisco. Framed under Plexiglas. Jose Louis Cuevas was born in Mexico City in 1933 -2017. A master draftsman, Jose Luis Cuevas played a pivotal role in Latin America's drawing and printmaking renaissance of the sixties and seventies. He is also associated with Latin America's neofigurative movement, along with artists such as Fernando Botero and Antonio Segui. By the age of fourteen, he had illustrated numerous periodicals and books and had had his first exhibition in Mexico City. In 1953 Cuevas published La cortina del nopal (The Cactus Curtain), an article condemning aspects of the Mexican Mural movement and advocating greater artistic freedom. This philosophy inspired the founding in 1960 of the group Nueva Presencia, which he joined for a brief time. It promoted individual expression and figurative art reflecting the contemporary human condition. Cuevas' work was influenced by the graphic art of Goya and Picasso as well as by Posada and Orozco, whose representations of deformed creatures, degraded humanity and prostitutes were of particular thematic interest. Over the years, he has paid homage to his favorite painters as well as writers, such as Dostoevsky, Kafka, Quevedo and Sade, in numerous series of drawings and prints. Cuevas has said that his drawing represents the solitude and isolation of contemporary man and man's inability to communicate. It is for this reason that he often distorts and transforms the human figure to the point of uniqueness. Cuevas has had solo exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the world including the: University of Texas, Austin, 1961, the San Francisco Museum of Art, California,1970, the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, 1972, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas, 1974, Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, 1975, Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1976. His work was included in Four Masters of Line: Jose Luis Cuevas, Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, and Morris Graves, Musee de la Napoule, France, 1957 and in The Emergent Decade, Cornell University and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1965. Among his many awards are First International Prize for Drawing, Biennial of Sao Paulo, 1959, First Prize, International Black and White Exhibition, Lugano, Switzerland, 1962, First International Prize for Printmaking, Triennial of Graphic Arts, New Delhi, India, 1968, First Prize, III Latin American Print...