Patricia Nix

Large Figurative Abstract Expressionist Queen Collage Oil Painting Patricia Nix

1984

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...

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...

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...

Ellen De Meutter Paint 2, 2007 Acrylic, ink and oil on canvas 31.5 x 23.6 in (80.0 x 59.9 cm) Provenance: Secrets & Lies show at her American gallery Roberts & Tilton, LA in 2007 Ellen De Meutter (1981) teaches painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp. In 2006-2007 she followed the HISK programme in Ghent, in 2013-2014 she did a residency at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. De Meutter is represented by Tim Van Laere Gallery since 2006. (they represent Tal R, Marcel Dzama, Tomasz Kowalski and Franz West) Her work has been shown in various exhibitions in Belgium, the United States, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Japan. In 2010 she had her first solo museum exhibition in Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens. Ellen De Meutter alters her viewer's reality by presenting a language in which she classifies the figures, shapes and colors from her personal world into a captivating utopia. Contrary to current trends in Flemish art, De Meutter is not simply relaying an anecdote; she composes unique imagery that allows her to experiment with the placement of the subject and unique treatments of her medium. De Meutter's repertoire of vivid, semi-neon colors contrast the muted grays blacks and grays on which they lay. These seemingly energetic colors are at once enhanced by the dark undertones of the canvas below, while simultaneously insinuating a concealed gravity of subject. Belgian art critic and curator, Luk Lambrecht remarks on De Meutter's painting: "she folds back 'her' world onto itself, into a solid mass of color from which, very slowly, vague contours emerge, which safeguard our expectations about looking at an image." De Meutter's scenes are reminiscent of schoolyard games, incorporating a series of text and symbols. By combing figurative imagery with basic abstraction, Ellen De Meutter creates wildly successful compositions that allude to her comprehensive understanding of contemporary painting. She was included in the show, Tomorrow is a long time: Ellen De Meutter, Gelitin, Kati Heck, Anton Henning, Friedrich Kunath...