SEPTEMBER 15 - OCTOBER 29, 2005
The Poetics of Painting 1981-2005
Nube Pasajera / Passing Cloud
RVA-131-MM
Hackett Freedman Gallery of San Francisco proudly presents an exhibition of paintings and monotypes by Gustavo Ramos Rivera. This show surveys his work from the 1980s to the present and features paintings, monotypes, and mixed-media collages. The exhibition coincides with Ramos Rivera’s current traveling retrospective at the Ex Convento del Carmen in Guadalajara, Mexico. In January 2006, the San Jose Museum of Art will present a retrospective exhibition of paintings with companion exhibitions at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art and other venues happening simultaneously. The SJMA show will tour to the Fresno Art Museum in the summer of 2006. A comprehensive catalogue will be published for the exhibition.
Ramos Rivera has created a body of work notable for its emotional and visual intensity and highly individualized iconography. Through the use of brilliant color and a highly personal symbology, Ramos Rivera has created his own language that is written throughout his paintings, monotypes, and collages. These singular expressions, such as a circle, an X, or a branch, function on both an intellectual and emotional level and their deployment is reminiscent of the work of Paul Klee, Joan Miró, and Cy Twombly.1 It also harkens back to the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art and architecture of Ramos Rivera’s native Mexico.
All of the works in Ramos Rivera’s career represent a special confluence of his cultural past with his present day environment. His work follows the thread of 20th-century Mexican painting from Rufino Tamayo on through Francisco Toledo. However, he melds this tradition with that of Bay Area abstract painting, especially as represented by artists such as Frank Lobdell, Manuel Neri, and Richard Diebenkorn. The resulting cross-cultural hybrid makes Ramos Rivera’s abstractions stand alone.
Ramos Rivera’s work has evolved over the past three decades; the dark, tar-laden canvases of the 1980s have a brooding intensity and represent internal states of mind more so than his later works. In the 1990s, Ramos Rivera began working with color fields punctuated by hieroglyphics. Over time, he has broken down these fields and is now juxtaposing large areas of color to create images that radiate pure sensation.
A master printmaker and collagist, Ramos Rivera’s works on paper equal the scope and intensity of his works on canvas. In his monotypes, his skill as a colorist is readily apparent as he builds up translucent layers of color that create an illusion of depth. Their atmospheric quality and linear structure reveal Ramos Rivera’s affinity for Diebenkorn, especially the Ocean Park series.
Gustavo Ramos Rivera was born in Coahuila, Mexico and immigrated to San Francisco in 1969. He has exhibited extensively since 1974 in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. In 1992 he received a Fleishacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship. His work is held in the collections of the San Jose Museum of Art, the Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, San Francisco, and the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, among others. Hackett-Freedman Gallery began representing Ramos Rivera and his work in January 2004.
1 Bruce Nixon, “Everything Is Possible: Paintings by Gustavo Ramos Rivera” in Gustavo Ramos Rivera (San Francisco: San Jose Museum of Art).