Arreguín: Painter from the New World
July 2 - October 9, 2022
Northwest artist Alfredo Arreguín (b. 1935) is among the most accomplished Latino artists in the nation. Over his long, successful career, Arreguín has long addressed his Mexican-American heritage by commemorating historic individuals and activists. The exhibition, Arreguín: Painter from the New World juxtaposes examples of the artist’s abstractions with figurative-narrative imagery of real-life individuals and indigenous Mexican religious and mythological heroes and heroines. We see a lifelong series of negotiations between abstraction and representation displayed separately and in near proximity. The intricate patterning, bright colors, and multiple spatial planes come together in paintings that magnetize the viewer through optical and chromatic effects that are completely original.
Photo credit: Kevin Cruff
Los Monos de Peru, 2020, Oil on canvas, 60” x 48”
Mother and Son, 2009, oil on canvas, 60”x48'“
El Huipil, 2017, oil on canvas, 48”x36”
Suquamish Waters, 2018, Oil on canvas, 60” x 96”
What has not been appreciated until now are Arreguín’s ties to European modernism—cubism, surrealism, geometric abstraction—and their impact on his art. While attending the University of Washington School of Art , he was urged by visiting Bay Area artist Elmer Bischoff (1916-1991) and UW Professor Michael Spafford (1935-2022) to draw on his rich cultural background of mythology, social change, ecology and activism for subject matter. This he did by applying his classical fine arts training and immersion in modern art sources learned at the School of Art between 1966 and 1969. Honored repeatedly across the nation as well as at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in 2015 Arreguín became a “painter from the New World” visiting European audiences with a successful touring exhibition in Spain, transfixing the descendants of his Spanish and Basque ancestors. His wide following in North and Central America attracted by pictures of complex structure demonstrates how anthropological, archaeological and ethnic sources may be seamlessly woven into dazzling compositions of nature and humanity. Arreguín: Painter from the New World celebrates the brilliance and uniqueness of one of the Northwest living masters, at the convergence of artistic traditions and cultural identities.
Nuestra Senora de la Selva (Our Lady of the Jungle), 1989, Oil on canvas, 72” x 48”
El Joven Zapata, 1995, oil on canvas, 28”x22”
Arreguín: Painter from the New World is curated by Matthew Kangas. Kangas, widely known as an art critic, has also flourished as an exhibition juror and curator. As curator he has organized retrospectives of Northwest artists such as Maria Frank Abrams, Jacqueline Barnett, William Cumming, Mary Henry, Michael Lawson and Robert Sperry, among others. As a juror, he has awarded prizes in South Korea, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Washington, and elsewhere. He lives in Seattle. Midmarch Arts Press, New York, has published four collections of his essays, interviews, and reviews.
This exhibition was made possible in part by the generosity of the following donors:
Key Bank, Greg Dunn, Laura Dillaway, Linda Hodges Gallery, Cynthia Sears, Charles Stavig, Ted Swigart, Thomas Whittemore & Michele Broderick
