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Abaj Takalik  

Elizabeth P. Benson

Pre-Columbian Maya site in Retalhuleu, in the Highland Maya region, near the Pacific coast of Guatemala. It is best known for its monumental stone sculptures, some of which were recorded in the 19th century. The site lies partly on the Finca San Isidro Piedra Parada, and it was known by this name when Eric Thompson published a description of some of the sculpture in 1943. ‘Abaj Takalik’ (‘standing stone’) is a translation of ‘Piedra Parada’ into Quiché Maya. It was occupied during the Pre-Classic (c. 2000 bcc. ad 250) and Classic (c. ad 250–c. 900) periods. The site lies on a fertile slope between the mountains and the sea; there are remains of steep, manmade earthen terraces on which its structures were built. The earth removed to create the terraces may have been used to construct the various mounds at Abaj Takalik, a number of which were faced with stone cobbles. Adobe bricks were also used, and local volcanic material provided flooring. The site was covered in ...

Article

Abal, Hernan  

Argentinian, 20th century, male.

Born 25 May 1922, in Mendoza.

Painter, draughtsman.

After studying at the academy of fine arts in Mendoza, Abal became a teacher of painting and drawing there. From 1948, he exhibited in the official salons of Mendoza and Argentina, where he obtained some distinctions. He lived in France ...

Article

Abalsamo, Pascual José  

Argentinian, 20th century, male.

Born 27 November 1901, in Buenos Aires.

Painter, draughtsman.

Abalsamo was a student at the school of fine arts in Buenos Aires, then became a drawing teacher. He took part in various official salons - the national salon from 1935, the salon of the arts in Buenos Aires and the Eva Perón arts salon from ...

Article

Abela, Eduardo  

Cuban, 20th century, male.

Born 1892, in Havana; died 1966.

Painter, illustrator, caricaturist. Landscapes.

Abela studied at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro in Cuba, after a period of working in a cigar factory. He lived in Paris from 1927 to 1930, then was made director of the free academy in Havana in 1937. He contributed to many Cuban newspapers. He is well-known as a caricaturist, having created the character of ...

Article

Abela, Eduardo  

Giulio V. Blanc

(b San Antonio de los Baños, nr. Güines, 1889; d Havana, 1965).

Cuban painter and caricaturist. He graduated from the Academia de S. Alejandro in Havana in 1920 and lived in Paris from 1927 to 1929. There he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and abandoned academicism, developing a modernist “Cuban” style, in which folkloric scenes of peasant life were depicted in a colorful, energetic, pseudo-naive manner reminiscent of Jules Pascin and Amedeo Modigliani. An outstanding work of this period is Triumph of the Rumba (c. 1928; Havana, Mus. N. B.A.). After a trip to Italy in the early 1930s, Abela began to paint canvases such as Guajiros (“Peasants”; 1938; Havana, Mus. N. B.A.), in which the classical sobriety and order is the result of his contact with Italian medieval and Renaissance art. His style underwent a radical change in the early 1950s, and from this time until his death he painted small works that recall in their use of fantasy the drawings of children as well as the works of Marc Chagall....

Article

Abélard, Gessner  

Haitian, 20th century, male.

Born 1922.

Painter. Local scenes, scenes with figures.

Abélard was a mechanic by trade. The Haitian painter, Charles Humberman, taught him painting at the industrial college in Port-au-Prince. In 1948, he joined the group at the art centre in Port-au-Prince that was founded by Dewitt Peters, a teacher of English, in ...

Article

Abrahams, Carl  

David Boxer

(b St Andrew, May 14, 1911; d Kingston, Apr 10, 2005).

Jamaican painter. He began his career as a cartoonist for various local periodicals. In 1937 Augustus John, then working in Jamaica, encouraged him to begin painting. Unlike the majority of his contemporaries, he eschewed the “official” classes of the Institute of Jamaica and virtually taught himself to paint through self-study courses and manuals and by copying masterpieces from art books. His cartoonist’s wit and a sardonic humor became the most important ingredients in work that drew on numerous stylistic sources, from Renaissance painting to Cubism. He was a devout Christian, and produced a host of religious works of an undeniable sincerity, although he transformed many traditional Christian themes into witty contemporary parables. His Last Supper (1955; Kingston, N.G.) is the best known of these. Some of his finest work consists of ironic transformations of the great mythological themes of the past and intensely personal fantasies based on contemporary events. He was also one of the few painters to treat successfully historical Jamaican subjects, for example in paintings of the imagined daily lives of the extinct Arawaks, the landing of Columbus, and a series depicting the riotous living of 17th-century buccaneers in Port Royal. His ...

Article

Abramo, Livio  

Brazilian, 20th century, male.

Born 1938, in Araraquara (São Paulo); died 1992, in Asuncion, Paraguay.

Engraver (wood).

Abramo was primarily a wood engraver. In 1960, he founded an engraving studio in São Paulo in order to revive that technique. From 1948, he participated in artistic events in Brazil, receiving numerous prizes there, namely at the São Paulo Biennales in ...

Article

Abramo, Lívio  

Roberto Pontual

revised by Gillian Sneed

(b Araraquara, 1903; d Asunción, Paraguay, 1992).

Brazilian printmaker and teacher. Abramo was born into a middle-class Italian immigrant family in Araraquara, in the state of São Paulo, before moving to the city of São Paulo in 1909. In 1911 he studied drawing with painter Enrico Vio (1874–1960) at the Colégio Dante Alighieri in São Paulo. In 1926 he came into contact with German Expressionism and the work of engraver Oswaldo Goeldi, and made his first woodcut print, Vista Chinesa (1926; Echauri de Muxfeldt 2012, pl. 122), depicting a village bridge in an Expressionist style. Initially self-taught in printmaking, his work addressed social themes such as the São Paulo working class. In 1928 and 1929 he created linocuts depicting images of the working class in a Cubist style for the newspaper Lo Spaghetto. In the early 1930s he became influenced by the paintings of Tarsila’s anthropophagic phase (1928–1929) and Lasar Segall’s Expressionism. In 1930 Abramo joined the Communist Party (PCB), but he was expelled in 1932 after he was accused of being a Trotskyist. In 1931 he began working as a draftsman for the ...

Article

Abreu, Mario  

Venezuelan, 20th century, male.

Born 22 August 1918, in Turmero.

Painter, collage artist. Landscapes, animals.

Abreu studied at the school of fine arts in Caracas, where from 1936 he associated with Cesario Enriquez, Matteo Manaure and in particular with Alejandro Otero and Pascual Navarro, who were both to play an important role in Venezuelan abstract art. Lively discussions took place between the five of them about the possibilities of rejecting the academic instruction that they were receiving and taking up contemporaneous forms of expression while preserving a typically Venezuelan identity. Several members of the group studied in Paris, where they were influenced by abstract painting. From ...

Article

Abreu, Mario  

Leyla Dunia

(b Turmero, nr. Maracay, Aug 22, 1919; d Caracas, Feb 20, 1993).

Venezuelan painter and sculptor. From humble origins, Abreu was raised by his godmother Amelia Borges, who was very attached to magical rituals and religion. This experience would influence him deeply in his artistic practice. Abreu had to work from a very young age, mostly as a clerk in a grocery store where he began to develop a sensibility for the aesthetics of objects and organization. He moved to Caracas in 1938 and continued working while he attended night school and finished his primary education. He also attended classes at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Aplicadas in Caracas, studying under Pedro Ángel Gonzáles, Vicente Fabianni, Francisco Narváez, and Marcos Castillo. In 1942 he obtained a scholarship that enabled him to go to day class and graduated in 1947 as painter.

Among Abreu’s classmates were members of a novel generation that would became renowned artists including Carlos Cruz-Diez, Pascual Navarro (1923–1986), Mateo Manaure, and Alejandro Otero, who would mostly dedicate their practice to abstraction. However, Abreu maintained a personal language marked by a search for the transcendent in the figure. In 1948 he was a founder-member of the Taller Libre de Arte, an independent group of young and talented artists that experimented in Cubist, Surrealist, Expressionist, and figurative trends....

Article

Abularach, Rodolfo  

Guatemalan, 20th century, male.

Active in the USA.

Born 9 January 1934.

Painter.

Abularach was studying engineering when he began his painting studies in 1953 in Pasadena. He exhibited from 1947 while still pursuing his training. He spent a period in Mexico that lasted until ...

Article

Abularach, Rodolfo  

Jorge Luján-Muñoz

(b Guatemala, Jan 7, 1933).

Guatemalan painter and printmaker. From 1954 to 1957 he studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Guatemala City while researching folk art for the Dirección de Bellas Artes, but he was virtually self-taught and began as a draftsman and painter of bullfighting scenes. In 1958 he traveled to New York on a Guatemalan government grant, prolonging his stay there with further grants, studying at the Arts Students League and Graphic Art Center, and finally settling there permanently. He was influential in Guatemala until c. 1960, but because of his long residence abroad his work did not fit easily in the context of Central American art. Before leaving Guatemala he had painted landscapes and nudes in a naturalistic style, but he soon adopted a more modern idiom partly inspired by aboriginal Guatemalan subjects. After moving to New York, and especially from 1958 to 1961, his art underwent a profound transformation as he sought to bring together elements of abstract art and Surrealism and experimented with textures, for example in cross-hatched pen-and-ink drawings such as ...

Article

Acebal y Digoras, Arturo  

Argentinian, 20th century, male.

Born 1912, near Buenos Aires.

Painter, potter.

Acebal Y Digoras went to Spain to study at the school of fine arts in Bilbao, then began to exhibit in Bilbao and Paris. After returning to Argentina, he regularly took part in the national salon, as well as in collective events in Latin America, such as the salon in Mar-del-Plata ...

Article

Aceves Navarro, Gilberto  

Julieta Ortiz Gaitán

(b Mexico City, Sept 24, 1931).

Mexican painter. He studied at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura y Escultura “La Esmeralda” under Enrique Assad Lara and Carlos Orozco Romero. His work reflects a concern for the negative effects of industrialization and modernization on cities and displays a nostalgia for more humane urban conditions. His large-scale paintings, for example the Boots of the Gran Solar (oil on canvas, 1.60×1.80 m, 1982; artist’s col.), convey a sense of urgency through the use of light and color, with broad lines and chromatic tones creating dynamic forms that show the influence of Abstract Expressionism.

Siete pintores contemporáneos: Gilberto Aceves Navarro, Luis López Loza, Rodolfo Nieto, Brian Nissen, Tomás Parra, Vlady, Roger von Gunten. Mexico City, Pal. B.A., 1977. Exhibition catalog.Tibol, R. Aceves Navarro, Durero y las variaciones. Mexico City, 1978.Idalia, M. “Más libertad y menos barroquismo en la nueva pintura de Aceves Navarro” [Greater freedom and less extravagance in the new painting of Aceves Navarro]. ...

Article

Aceves, Gustavo  

Mexican, 20th century, male.

Born 1931.

Painter, pastellist, draughtsman. Figures, nudes.

New York, 1 May 1990: Waiting for the Transformation (pastel and charcoal/paper, 50 × 37¾ ins/127 × 96 cm) USD 3,080

New York, 2 May 1990: Nude (pastel/paper, 35¾ × 48½ ins/91 × 123 cm) ...

Article

Acosta León, Ángel  

Cuban, 20th century, male.

Born 1930, in Havana; died 1964.

Painter. Still-lifes.

Acosta León studied at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro in Havana. In the 1950s, he worked as driver in a transport company. He spent a period in Paris in 1963...

Article

Acosta, Wladimiro  

Ludovico C. Koppmann

[Konstantinovsky, Wladimir]

(b Odessa, Russia, Jun 23, 1900; d Buenos Aires, Jul 11, 1967).

Argentine architect. He studied architecture at the Istituto di Belle Arti in Rome, graduating in 1919. From 1922 he worked in Germany, gaining experience in building engineering and urban design, before moving to Argentina in 1928. He worked in Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela, Guatemala, and, from 1954 to 1957, in the USA, where he taught (1956) at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. On his return to Argentina he was appointed Professor of Architectural Composition (1957–1966) at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Acosta was an early exponent of an approach to architecture through environmental design and engineering, which he promoted through his book Vivienda y clima (1937) and his “Helios” buildings. These were based upon correct orientation, cross-ventilation, and the control of solar radiation by means of brises-soleil, with minimal mechanical intervention. Like the architects of the Modern Movement in Europe, he saw architecture as a social phenomenon and became dedicated to the provision of mass housing for rapidly growing urban populations. His early work included individual houses in Buenos Aires, for example the Casa Stern, Ramos Mejía (...

Article

Acuna, Luis Alberto  

Colombian, 20th century, male.

Born 1904, in Suaita (Santander).

Painter, sculptor.

Acuna spent a period living in France, where he was a student of Henri Bouchard and Paul Landowsky, the sculptors. He began painting in the late 1920s, with still-lifes influenced by analytical cubism, sometimes bordering on abstraction. Although he adhered to the mode of muralism that came from Mexico, he simultaneously opposed all forms of academicism. As an art historian and critic, Acuna was one of the propagators of European forms of expression in Latin America. He first exhibited in ...

Article

Acunha, Julio  

Colombian, 20th century, male.

Active and naturalised in the USA.

Born 18 March 1929.

Painter, draughtsman.

Acunha studied architecture and then fine art at the Cranbrook Academy. In parallel with painting, he pursued a teaching career, principally at the University of Delaware in Newark. He showed his works in solo exhibitions: in ...