Inside job: Alfredo Santos, muralist and painter

 1960s  8 Responses »
Feb 052015
 

Alfredo Santos spent some time painting, and dealing in art, in Ajijic (and elsewhere in Mexico) in the early 1960s. However, before we look at that period of his life in more detail, it is worth considering his extraordinary backstory.

Alfredo Santos was born in San Diego in 1927, the third of five children. He spent his early childhood in Tijuana, where his father was a union activist. The family moved back to the U.S. when Santos was 8. His early education came to an abrupt halt when he was expelled from high school for hitting a school official.

An infection that left him with fragile bones prevented him from enlisting in the U.S. military. Santos then had a series of scrapes with the law, including a prison term for helping smuggle illegal immigrants from Mexico cross the border. (Santos later said, “To me, I didn’t see anything immoral. I was sort of a Robin Hood, I thought.”)

He turned from people-smuggling to drug dealing, but was arrested again, and, in 1951, at age 24, began a four-year stint in San Quentin prison in California that would transform his life. Santos acknowledges that “San Quentin is where I became an artist.” (see this link)

His bone infection meant that he spent his entire time in prison in the hospital cells, where he read voraciously and even had his own small art studio. He drew caricatures of his fellow inmates in exchange for cigarettes.

Santos’ “Big Break” came when the prison doctor encouraged him in 1953 to enter a contest to paint some murals on the dining room walls. His quickly-sketched proposal (for a single wall), showing the transformation of California between the 1850s and the start of the second world war, was a clear winner, and he was given all three double-sided walls to work with. Because the dining room was in constant use during the day, painting was done almost entirely at night. The six murals – each about 12 feet high and 95 feet long – took two years to complete, with Santos absolutely determined to finish them before his parole date.

Alfredo Santos: detail from murals in San Quentin Prison

Alfredo Santos: detail from murals in San Quentin Prison

The murals, done in browns and blacks, show a kaleidoscope of Californian history, ranging from a cable car (that follows viewers across the room) to a wartime airplane and whimsical images of a sombrero-clad immigrant crossing the border and a soldier looking through a telescope at a woman undressing in a high-rise window further along the wall. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake is depicted, as is the golden age of Hollywood.

Alfredo Santos: detail from murals in San Quentin Prison

Alfredo Santos: detail from murals in San Quentin Prison

When he left San Quentin in 1955 Santos took with him some 50 paintings completed during his incarceration. He worked as a caricaturist at Disneyland for two years, saving enough money to return to San Diego in 1957 and open his own art studio and gallery. By 1960 the gallery “had become a mainstay of that city’s nascent arts scene.” (Russell) However, in 1961 the law caught up with him once again. He was arrested, and admitted to, one count of marijuana possession (a felony at the time). The night before he was due to appear in court for sentencing, Santos decided to go on the run. He married his 19-year-old girlfriend and they eloped to Mexico.

They appear to have first lived in Guadalajara, where a press release for the opening of his gallery in the city in 1961 proclaimed that the artist had come to Mexico to “have more freedom to express himself artistically.” At least one newspaper article [SFWeekly, 23 July 2003] includes a photo of him in his Guadalajara studio in 1961. In 1962, an exhibition of paintings by Tink Strother and other artists was held at the Alfredo Santos gallery in Guadalajara. That same year (1962), Santos exhibited his own work at the 1st Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculptures on Ajijic Beach, organized by Laura Bateman’s Rincón del Arte gallery. Other artists in this juried show with prizes, held in front of Posada Ajijic, included Antonio Cárdenas, Mary Cardwell, Juan Gutiérrez, Dick Keltner, “Linares” (Ernesto Butterlin), Carlos López Ruíz, Betty Mans, Gail Michels, John Minor, Eugenio Olmedo, Florentino Padilla, Gustavo Sendis, Tink Strother, Digur Weber, Doug Weber, Rhoda Williamson, Sid Williamson, Javier Zaragoza and Paul Zars.

Santos’ marriage did not last long. His homesick bride returned to California after eight months, where the marriage was annulled. Santos, though, remained in Mexico and his art flourished.

Among those highly impressed by Santos’ wood sculpting and abstract paintings was Joan Woodbury, an ex-actress turned Palm Springs art critic. In one of her regular newspaper columns, she described Santos as “one of Mexico’s foremost impressionists”. She helped arrange a month-long showing of his work at a Palm Springs gallery.

Alfredo Santos: mural in Cafe Madrid, Guadalajra

Alfredo Santos. 1961. Mural in Cafe Madrid, Guadalajara

During his time in Guadalajara, Santos, who liked to listen to jazz as he painted, became friends with the owner of the Café Madrid, a downtown restaurant on Av. Juárez that became, and remains, a Guadalajara institution, much loved by the literary and artistic crowd. At the owner’s insistence, one night Santos painted a picturesque mural, known as “Ciudad de mujeres” (“City of women”) in the restaurant. It depicts imagined daily life in the Spanish capital Madrid, full of beautiful women. Santos is said to have completed this mural in a single, liquor-fueled, fun-filled night. According to one version, the women in the mural were originally portrayed in the nude, but the wife of the café’s owner wife insisted that clothes be added. The mural is still there, and both restaurant and mural are well worth visiting.

After Guadalajara, it seems that Santos moved to Ajijic, though the precise circumstances and timing remain unclear. By 1963/64, Santos, accompanied by a young lady, had taken up residence in Ajijic’s Hotel Anita, then the social center of the village. Katharine Couto, whose parents owned the hotel from 1963/64, recalls that, “He was always quite charming and nice, but I was only 13 years old. Now I read he was “on the lam” which would explain why he and his beautiful girlfriend always stayed secluded in their suite.” She also recalls that Santos paid her parents, in part, with two paintings, one of which she later donated to the Latino Center in Omaha, Nebraska.

Another Ajijic resident of the time, Randi Atchison, recalls how, in the early 1960s, their family “spent time at his gallery in Guadalajara, watched him paint and enjoyed his colorful character.” Atchison has several paintings by Santos, on one of which “Alfredo wrote a personal note to my mother on the back… in her lipstick, that remains legible 44 years later.” Atchison notes that, “Alfredo also came to our house in Ajijic one day and painted a large Mariachi band mural on the living room wall.” it is unclear if this mural still exists.

In 1964, Santos decided to try his luck in Mexico City. He opened a studio-gallery on Calle Niza, in the city’s trendy Zona Rosa district. The following year, he married Mary Ann Summers; the couple (who divorced in 1977) had two sons, the elder of whom (Chris Santos) is now a professional artist in New York. Summers has described Santos’ studio-gallery at this time: “Alfredo had this fantastic gallery above a Chinese restaurant with four huge rooms downstairs and a big sunny studio loft above it… Between the two levels, sort of hidden away, was his bedroom, the walls of which were completely covered with photographs and paintings of nudes.”

This 5-minute Youtube video, Broken Mold: the Life and Art of Alfredo Santos, shows him at work:

In 1966, Santos moved his gallery to Acapulco for a year, before deciding to return to the U.S. In 1967, Santos settled into a rented apartment in New York, with his wife and infant son. He undertook commissions for various New York clients who had discovered his work in Mexico. One of them convinced Santos to relocate to the village of Fleischmanns, in the Catskills and close to Woodstock. Santos’ studio-gallery in Fleischmanns became “a magnet for every hip person for miles around,” according to one of his longtime friends and patrons.

In the 1980s, following his divorce from Summers and a heart attack, Santos moved back to San Diego. In 2011, the Zoom Gallery in Fleischmanns, held a retrospective of the works of Alfredo Santos, “The People’s Artist”.

In 2003, arrangements were finally made for Alfredo Santos to revisit San Quentin, this time as a distinguished guest rather than as an inmate, and see his murals again for the first time in almost fifty years. Only then, did the full extraordinary story of these amazing prison murals make the mainstream press.

Alfredo Santos died on 15 March 2015.

Sources:

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Charles Pollock and his Chapala Series (1955-56)

 1950s  No Responses »
Jan 292015
 

Charles Pollock (1902-1988), the oldest brother of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), who became an icon of the American abstract art movement in the late 1940s and early 1950s, was a fine artist in his own right.

In terms of longevity, Charles Pollock’s artistic career eclipsed Jackson’s. Charles’ work has been significantly reevaluated in recent years, thanks in part to the determined efforts of his second wife Sylvia, and their daughter Francesca.

Charles spent a year in Ajijic on the shores of Lake Chapala in 1955-56, returning to the U.S. only weeks before Jackson was killed in a car accident at age 44.

Charles Pollock: Chapala Series 1 (1956)

Charles Pollock: Chapala Series 1 (1956)

Charles Pollock: Chapala Series 4 (1956)

Charles Pollock: Chapala Series 4 (1956)

While in Ajijic, Charles produced numerous paintings and drawings, collectively known as the Chapala Series. The series was first exhibited more than fifty years later, in 2007, at the Jason McCoy Gallery in New York.

According to the exhibition blurb,

From 1955 to 1956, Charles Pollock, the older brother of Jackson, lived in Ajijic, a small village in Mexico. About ten years earlier he had abandoned his Social Realist style, inspired by his former teacher Thomas Hart Benton, searching for a new form of artistic expression. While teaching design, printmaking, calligraphy and typography at Michigan State University (1942-1967), he became increasingly focused on pure form and color relationships. It was in the quietude of Mexico’s Lake Chapala, when surrounded by ancient Mayan land, that he produced a body of work that would lay the groundwork for the art Pollock made from then on.”

“The Chapala series consists of thirty large drawings and fifteen paintings. All of these works are abstract and overtly inspired by calligraphy. They are immediately striking in their unique handling of light and form, which are employed to create distinct moods of atmospheric merit. In the paintings, both subtle color nuances and stark contrasts initiate a vibrancy that easily brings the Mexican mountain landscape to mind. Burnt sienna, earth brown, and translucent blues, for example, are fused into a harmonious mélange, while shapes reminiscent of simplified hieroglyphic fragments create a mysteriously codified language.”

While “ancient Mayan land” is something of a misnomer for the Chapala region of western Mexico, the peaceful surroundings of Lake Chapala certainly proved to be the ideal destination for Charles’ first, and artistically-fruitful, sabbatical year. In the words of art critic Stephanie Buhmann:

… the Chapala works unmistakably reveal the true quality and caliber of Charles Pollock. They document a mature understanding of materials and visual vocabulary that in its consistency is as impressive as it is authentic. Charles Pollock succeeded in formulating a unique sensibility that at once can draw us in and remains inclusive no matter how abstract and mysterious its poetry.”

Born on Christmas Day in 1902 in Denver, Colorado, Charles Cecil Pollock was the eldest of five boys (Jackson was the youngest). The family moved frequently and Charles spent his early years in Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona and California.

At age 20, he moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a copyboy for The Los Angeles Times while attending classes at the Otis Art Institute. In California, he developed an interest in Mexican art, particularly in the murals of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. These, and other Mexican artists, would have a lasting impact on Pollock’s own art.

Charles and Jackson Pollock in New York, 1930

Charles and Jackson Pollock in New York, 1930

Pollock moved to New York in 1926 and studied at the Art Students’ League under Thomas Hart Benton, who became a life-long friend. In 1930, he helped persuade Jackson to move to New York and also study with Benton. In 1931, Charles married Elizabeth Feinberg (1902-1997); they had one daughter named Jeremy Capille.

In 1934, during the Great Depression, Charles and Jackson drive across the country to see what is happening for themselves:

Six weeks later, Charles and Jackson buy a Model T Ford for fifteen dollars and set out to visit their mother for the first time since their father’s death. (On returning to New York they would sell it for twice the cost.) Like so many other Americans they were taking to the road, not looking for work but to see how their fellow citizens were faring. Their elaborate itinerary, which took them through scenes of intense labor conflict such as Harlan County, Kentucky, and steel towns near Pittsburgh and Birmingham, indicates how politically engaged Charles had become. The ten letters he wrote to his first wife, Elizabeth, are really reports from the field to a keenly intelligent woman even more of an activist than he was. In the dry, hot landscape of Texas he is appalled by the grim condition of poverty-stricken blacks and Mexicans. “Even though this is beautiful country for these people [it] is indescribably barren and harsh.” (Source: All in the Family – Jackson Pollock)

In 1935, he moved to Washington DC to work with the Resettlement Administration and two years later he became a political cartoonist for the United Automobile Workers’ newspaper in Detroit, Michigan.

Between 1938 and 1942 Pollock was Supervisor of Mural Painting and Graphic Arts for the Federal Arts Project (WPA) in Michigan. After completing murals in the foyer of Fairchild Auditorium of Michigan State College (later Michigan State University) in 1942, the artist joined the faculty in the Art Department, where he taught design, printmaking, calligraphy and typography for over two decades. He created a department of fine printing, working with a Washington Hand Press, and was book designer to the Michigan State College Press from 1942 to 1959.

In 1945 he spent three months drawing and painting in the desert of Arizona. This experience marked a turning point in his career as he abandoned social realism and began experimenting with abstraction. To escape the artistic shadow of his younger brother, he exhibited work in 1952s in the Circle Gallery, Detroit, under the name Charles Pima.

Later in his academic career, Charles was an artist in residence at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965 and 1967, the recipient of a Guggenheim Grant in 1967-68 and a National Foundation of Arts Grant in 1967.

Charles Pollock: Chapala Series, Drawing 3 (1956)

Charles Pollock: Chapala Series, Drawing 3 (1956)

His visit to Ajijic was the first of two sabbatical years from his university positions; the other one was in Rome, 1962-63.

Charles married Sylvia Winter in 1957. Their daughter Francesca McCoy was born in Michigan ten years later. After Charles retired from teaching in 1967, the family lived in New York. In 1970 Sylvia was offered a job in Paris. The following year, the family moved to Europe, and never returned. Charles Pollock died in Paris on 8 May 1988.

In his latter years, while living in Paris, Charles Pollock had major shows in France, England and Belgium. His work is found in numerous collections, including those of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the National Gallery of Art.

Charles Pollock’s solo shows include: Ferargil Gallery, New York (1934); Circle Gallery, Detroit, Michigan (1952); Galeria Pogliani, Rome, Italy (1963); Kresge Art Center, Michigan State University (1964); Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Michigan (1964); Henri Gallery, Washington, DC (1966); Gertrude Kasle Gallery, Detroit, Michigan (1967, 1968, 1969); Acme Gallery, London, GB (1979); Art Center, Paris, France (1981); Jason McCoy Gallery, New York (1984, 1987, 1989, 2007 (The Chapala Series), 2008, 2009); Ball State University Museum, Muncie, Indiana (2003); American Contemporary Art Gallery, Munich, Germany (2008) (The Chapala Series); Espace d’Art Contemporain Fernet-Branca, Alsace (2009).

Charles Pollock was a fine artist in his own right, but also deserves recognition for his considerable influence on the artistic career of his famous younger brother Jackson. Charles’ influence over Jackson is evident from the correspondence among family members that forms the subject matter of American Letters: 1927-1947: Jackson Pollock and Family (edited by Charles’ second wife Sylvia Winter Pollock). In his introduction to this volume, Michael Leja writes of Charles that,

His guidance helped Jackson early on, and the extent of his influence over his youngest brother is obvious from their exchange of letters in October 1929, the month of the stock-market crash. Charles told Jackson to forget the religion and theosophy he was learning from his high-school art teacher and accept the challenge of contributing to the progress of modern life and culture. He recommended looking up the art of Benton and the Mexican muralists in magazines such as The Arts and Creative Art and delving into psychology and sociology. Jackson took Charles’s advice very seriously: “I have read and re-read your letter with clearer understanding each time.” He “dropped religion for the present,” subscribed to the art magazines Charles mentioned, and fantasized about moving to Mexico City…”

Want to read more?

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Charles Lewis Wrenn (1880-1952), portraitist and illustrator

 1940s  14 Responses »
Jan 222015
 

Artist, portraitist and illustrator Charles Lewis Wrenn was born 18 Sep 1880 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and died 28 Oct 1952 in Norwalk, Fairfield, Connecticut.

He painted several watercolors at Lake Chapala, including some in Ajijic in 1943, though the precise dates of his visit or visits to the area are currently unknown. This watercolor of fishermen tending their nets is typical of his work; it is almost identical to another watercolor dated 1943, presumably painted at the same time:

Charles L. Wrenn: Lake Chapala

Charles L. Wrenn. c 1943. Lake Chapala. (Davis Brothers Auction, 2022)

Wrenn’s choice of subject matter at Lake Chapala included some relatively rarely painted scenes, such as this lovely painting of a ruined building on historic Mezcala Island:

Charles L. Wrenn. c 1943. "Old Prison at Lake Chapala." (Reproduced by kind permission of Allen Bourne)

Charles L. Wrenn. c 1943. “Old Prison at Lake Chapala.” (Reproduced by kind permission of Allen Bourne)

This gloomier watercolor, entitled “Water Carrier, Lake Chapala” was for sale on eBay in November 2015:

Charles L. Wrenn: Water Carrier, Lake Chapala

Charles L. Wrenn. Water Carrier, Lake Chapala. Date unknown (eBay, 2015)

And this charming Ajijic watercolor, dated 1943, with its obvious illustrator influence, was for sale on eBay in 2024:

Charles Wrenn. 1943. Ajijic. (eBay, March 2024)

Charles L. Wrenn. 1943. Ajijic, Mexico. (eBay, March 2024)

In about 1900 (when he was about 20 years old) Wrenn moved to New York City and lived in Manhattan. After graduating from Princeton in the class of 1903, he immersed himself in art, studying at The Art Students League, and with the impressionist painter William Merritt Chase (1849-1916).  On 5 October 1907 he married Helen Gibbs Bourne of New Jersey, and they moved to 364 West 23rd Street; his art studio was at 9 East 10th Street. The couple later moved to Wilson Point, Norwalk, where Charles (“Charlie”) had his studio in the loft of his red barn.

Cover art by Charles L. Wrenn

Cover art by Charles L. Wrenn

In 1914, Wrenn wrote that, “My ten years since graduation have been devoted to ART.  After a year at the Art Students’ League and The New York Art School, I took up the illustrating branch and have been following it ever since.” From 1911 to 1917 he drew illustrations for stories in The Red Book Magazine, People’s Home Journal, and The Housewife. He also painted cover illustrations for the pulp magazine Breezy Stories.

Wrenn illustrated numerous books, including: Molly Brown’s Sophomore Days by Nell Speed (1912); The Boy Scouts at the Panama Canal (1913) and Boy Scouts under Sealed Orders (1916), both by Howard Payson; Uncle Noah’s Christmas Inspiration (1914) by Leona Dalrymple; Guns of Europe (1915), Tree of Appomattox (1916), Hosts of the Air (1915), The Great Sioux Trail (1918), The Sun of Quebec: A Story of a Great Crisis (1919), all by Joseph A. Altsheler; Polly’s Senior Year at Boarding School (1917) by Dorothy Whitehill; Boy Scouts Afloat (1917) by Walter Walden; and For the Freedom of the Seas (1918) by Ralph Henry Barbour.

In 1918, at age thirty-eight, he was not accepted for military service in WWI, so he applied for a passport and went to France for one year as a citizen volunteer for the Red Cross, working as a stretcher bearer. His passport describes him as 5′ 10½”, blue eyes, grey hair, thin face, with a Roman nose and a scar on his right thumb. He listed his occupation as “artist”.

Cover by Charles L. Wrenn

Cover art by Charles L. Wrenn

After the Great War ended in 1919 he traveled to study art in Morocco, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Tunis, Egypt, and Great Britain. He returned to the U.S. in September of 1920. He returned to Europe in 1922, this time accompanied by his wife and his mother. They returned from Palermo, Italy aboard the “Providence”.

In 1929, he visited Haiti and in 1931 Bermuda.

From 1920 to 1936 he sold freelance pulp magazine covers to The Danger Trail, People’s Magazine, Ranch Romances, Three Star Magazine, and War Stories. He also drew interior story illustrations for Clues.

In 1936 he moved to Wilson Point, South Norwalk, in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he painted portraits and landscapes for the remainder of his life. Wrenn was a member of The Society of Illustrators and specialized in painting portraits and landscapes. He painted in many parts of the U.S. including the Catskill Mountains, California, and Walpi Mesa in Arizona.

After spending time in Mexico in the early 1940s, Wrenn held “a small exhibition of his Mexican water colors” at Loring Andrews gallery in Cincinnati in June 1946. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, besides paintings of Pátzcuaro and elsewhere, “His subject matter varies from the paintings of the strange narrow streets to the old houses of the natives of Lake Chapala.”

Wrenn and his wife visited Europe in 1952, returning only four months before his death.

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Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Source

  • The Cincinnati Enquirer: 16 June 1946, 74.

This post was updated on 12 November 2015, and on 30 March 2024.

Comments, corrections or additional material welcome, whether via comments or email.

Carlos López Ruíz (1912-1972)

 1950s, 1960s  30 Responses »
Jan 012015
 

Born 26 March 1912 in Chiquinquirá, Boyacá, Columbia, Carlos López Ruíz (sometimes simply Carlos López) lived and painted in Ajijic for several years in the early 1960s. He came from a well-connected family, but disappointed his father by not entering the military or the church. Instead he became an artist.

He began his artistic career by drawing cartoons for newspapers in Bogotá, as a sideline while working in the Cartography Department of the War Ministry from 1944-1951. His drawings and caricatures appeared in several newspapers including El Liberal, humor section of Sábado and the sports section of El Tiempo.

In 1948, he displayed two artworks – a pencil drawing entitled “Tumaqueña” and an oil painting, “Indígenas del Pacífico” – in the first annual group show for artists from Boyacá.

By the early 1950s, he had become an established illustrator and caricaturist in Colombia, though his radical cartoons had gained him a certain notoriety. He left Colombia in 1952 for the U.S.

lopez-ruiz-carlos-detail

In 1953, he began a two year scholarship at the Corcoran Art School in Washington, D.C.. He was awarded first prize for oil painting in a collective exhibit arranged by the school. He spent the next five years studying the old masters in the finest U.S. museums, as well as modern art in galleries from Philadelphia to California.

In 1956-1957, he had several solo shows in Washington D.C., including shows at the Collectors Corner Gallery and the ArtSmart Gallery. He also exhibited in New York in the mid-1950s.

He returned briefly to Colombia in 1957 to participate in the 10th Annual Show of Colombian Artists. In 1959, he moved to Ajijic, Mexico, looking for new subjects to study and paint. During his time in Ajijic, he held several exhibitions in Guadalajara as well as in local Ajijic galleries. It was in Ajijic that he first met fellow artist Tink Strother (1919-2007), a relationship that lasted about seven years.

Carlos Lopez-Ruiz in his Ajijic studio, ca 1962

Carlos López Ruiz in his Ajijic studio, ca 1962

Tink Strother’s son Loy remembers that his mother first met the hard-drinking López Ruiz when the artist was living with an aging, alcoholic, silent screen star… in the fabled “Casa Estrella”, a large house overlooking the village. When the movie star’s family arrived and insisted on taking her back to the U.S. to a detox clinic, Carlos moved down the hill and installed himself in the Hotel Anita, a couple of blocks from the village plaza.

López Ruiz gradually melded into the local art scene, and painted prolifically, specializing in fine portraits of horses and toreadors, as well as village scenes.

Carlos Lopez-Ruiz in his Ajijic studio, ca 1962

Carlos López Ruiz in his Ajijic studio, ca 1962

After he and Tink Strother became “an item”, they lived together in Ajijic, and exhibited together in a group show at the Alfredo Santos gallery in Guadalajara (1962). That year, both López Ruiz and Strother also exhibited at the 1st Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculptures on Ajijic Beach, organized by Laura Bateman’s Rincón del Arte gallery. (Other artists from Ajijic in that juried show with prizes included Antonio Cárdenas, Mary Cardwell, Juan Gutiérrez, Dick Keltner, “Linares” (Ernesto Butterlin), Betty Mans, Gail Michels, John Minor, Eugenio Olmedo, Florentino Padilla, Digur Weber, Doug Weber, Rhoda Williamson, Sid Williamson, Javier Zaragoza and Paul Zars.  Alfredo Santos and Gustavo Sendis.

In July 1962, López Ruiz returned for a short time to Colombia. The Galería “El Automático” in Bogotá held a one-man show for him later that year with twenty oil paintings.

Tink Strother and Carlos López Ruiz left Mexico and moved to California in 1963/64, where they opened a joint studio and gallery, first in Pico Rivera and then in Whittier. López Ruiz lived in Whittier until his death in 1972.

Loy Strother knew Carlos López Ruiz in the latter stages of his life as well as anyone, and still has the artist’s notebooks, drawings and personal writings. He admires Carlos as a fabulous painter, whose rapid brushwork was in no way inhibited by his copious consumption of brandy. López Ruiz was choosy about selling his work and would refuse to part with anything unless he decided he liked the purchaser.

The magnificent works of Carlos López Ruiz have been exhibited in Washington D.C., New York, Virginia, Texas, California, Mexico and Colombia.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Howard Baer painted at Chapala in 1941

 1940s  No Responses »
Dec 112014
 

Howard Baer, born 1906 in the small mining town of Finleyville, Pennsylvania, died in 1986 in the city of New York. Baer was a writer, painter, illustrator and cartoonist, whose first known solo exhibition in 1941 was a showing of paintings resulting from several months of work in Mexico, based in the town of Chapala.

Baer studied art at the Carnegie Mellon Technical Institute in Pittsburgh before moving to New York in 1929. New York remained his home base for the rest of his life, though he traveled widely, with extended spells in Mexico, France, the U.K., China and India.

Howard Baer: Untitled watercolor (date unknown) Howard

Howard Baer: untitled watercolor (date and location unknown)

Prior to his trip to Chapala, Baer’s drawings, illustrations, and cartoons had appeared, to considerable acclaim, in The New Yorker (1933-1937), Esquire and various other mainstream magazines. In about 1937 he married fashion model Lenore Pettit. The couple divorced seven years later in 1944, and Pettit would later befriend and eventually marry artist Matsumi (Mike) Kanemitsu (1922-1992), a close friend of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956).

Baer’s first opportunity since high school to devote himself to plein air easel painting came in 1941 when he spent several months in Chapala. It is unclear if his wife accompanied him on this trip. The resulting series of paintings, together with a large mural of the town, were exhibited in September 1941 in the gallery of the Associated American Artists in New York City. Critics’ praise of his talent was unanimous. The exhibit handout was entitled: “This is Chapala”.

Howard Baer: untitled. Date unknown

Howard Baer: untitled. Date unknown

During the war, he was chosen as a Navy artist, responsible for a series of drawings and paintings of WAVES (“Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service“) in aviation. He was later sent overseas to record actual battle warfare in the China-Burma India Theater of Operations.

Following the war, Baer illustrated children’s books on China and India. He lived for several years in Paris (1948-1951), wrote and illustrated a children’s book called Now this, now that (1957), taught art at the Henry Street Settlement, and at Parsons School of Design, in New York City, and also lived at least part of the 1960s in London, England.

Baer’s major exhibitions, besides that in 1941 based on his time in Chapala, included The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1942); Carnegie Institute (1949); Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (1949), Paris, France (1950; 1958), Toninelli Arte Moderna in Milan, Italy (1963; 1965) and the Ben Uri Art Society in London, England (1965; 1972).

His works can be found in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art; Walker Museum, Youngstown, Ohio; the Pentagon Archives of War, the Butler Institute of American Art; The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University Of Oklahoma; The Navy Museum-US Navy Art Collection; and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

David Holbrook Kennedy (1919-1942) painted a mural at Chapala in 1941

 1940s  6 Responses »
Dec 042014
 

Artist David Holbrook Kennedy was the youngest brother of food-writer Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. David Kennedy was born 19 May 1919, and educated at Whittier Union High School, Lake Forest Academy in Illinois, and Princeton University, before graduating from Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

In 1941, when David was 22 and his sister Norah 24, “Norah and David decided to go to Mexico for an extended stay. David had received a small grant to paint murals at Lake Chapala in west-central Mexico, and Norah intended to join him, and write about her experiences in Lanikai, Honolulu, and Molakai the previous year. On June 20 [1941] they left Whittier [California] with only a forwarding address of Wells Fargo in Mexico City… What Mary Frances and the family did not know was that David intended to invite his girlfriend, Sarah Shearer, to join him in Mexico, and that they planned to marry there in late September” (Reardon, 134).

In October 1941, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher visited David, Sarah and Norah in Chapala. David and Sarah, “a petite, blond, affable girl,” married on 11 October 1941 in Casa Casimiro Ramírez in Ajijic, described in one newspaper as the residence of author Nigel Stansbury-Millett and his father, Harry Millett; this must be one of the first all-American marriages in Ajijic. Guests at the wedding, and reception which followed, included Sarah’s mother—artist Inez Rogers Shearer; David’s two sisters; Swedish artist Nils Dardel and his partner Edita Morris; Mr and Mrs Francisco Nicolau of Guadalajara and their son Sergio; Mr and Mrs Casimiro Ramírez and two children; and the Honorable Mr Maurice Stafford (US Consul).

At Lake Chapala, the young couple lived in a “small house, where the whitewashed walls, tile floors, serapes, and minimal furnishings were enhanced by David’s pictures on the walls”. (Reardon, 140)

“The little house in the fishing village was fairly new, built to rent to summer-people who came for the lake and the quiet. It has a bathroom upstairs, fed from a tank on the roof which a man came every night to fill by the hand-pump in the tiny patio.” (Fisher, 545)

David, who had discovered and found he loved mariachi music, was infatuated with the falsetto voice of “Juanito”, the lead singer of a mariachi band – but Juanito turned out to be a girl! Fisher devotes an entire chapter to this rather confusing story about a girl from the hills who becomes, as a boy, the lead singer in an all-male mariachi band, before (perhaps on account of giving singing lessons to David) deciding to re-assume her female identity and leave the band. However, when David and Sarah married, the girl readopted her male persona and rejoined the mariachi band! The story, in all its colorful detail, is related by Fisher in the chapter entitled “Feminine Ending” in The Gastronomic Me.

David’s murals in the municipal baths in Chapala must have been among the earliest, if not the earliest, murals in the Lake Chapala region. Sadly, neither the murals nor the building that housed them still exist.

The murals were painted by the entire group (David, Sarah, Norah and Mary Frances) under David’s direction. The group worked on them every day for several weeks: “Norah and Sarah and I were helping David paint murals in the municipal baths, and spent several hours every day neck-deep in the clear running water of the pools, walking cautiously on the sandy bottoms with pie-plates full of tempera held up, and paint-brushes stuck in our hair.” (Fisher, 545)

The murals were finished toward the end of November 1941. Fisher and Norah flew back to Los Angeles, with David and Sarah following by car.

David credited Fisher’s second husband Dillwyn with encouraging him to pursue a career in art. The fact that Dillwyn took his own life [Dillwyn “was in the advanced stages of an incredibly painful and invariably fatal disease with nothing in his future but more amputations and constant, intransigent pain for which no medication was available in the USA.” – see comment below] shortly before Fisher’s visit to Chapala appears to have had a profound effect on David, who took his own life less than a year later in 1942. David was just 23 years old at the time, and he left his wife Sarah a widow while pregnant with their first child. David and Sarah’s daughter, Sarah Holbrook Kennedy, was born in August 1942.

Note

  • This post, first published on 4 December 2014, was updated and expanded in July 2022.

Sources

  • Joan Reardon, 2005. Poet of the Appetites: The Lives And Loves of M.F.K. Fisher (North Point Press)
  • M. F. K. Fisher, 1943. The Gastronomical Me (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York), reprinted in The Art of Eating (Macmillan 1979).
  • Buffalo Evening News (New York): 15 Oct 1941, 38; 24 December 1941, 3.
  • The Whittier News: 21 Oct 1941, 2.

Related posts

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

German-Mexican artist Hanns Otto Butterlin (1900-1956)

 1930s, 1940s, 1950s  24 Responses »
Nov 132014
 

Han(n)s Otto Butterlin (or Otto Butterlin as he was usually known, at least in Mexico) was born in Cologne, Germany, 26 Dec 1900 and became an abstract and impressionist painter of some renown.

He was the oldest of the three Butterlin brothers. Otto moved with his middle brother Frederick and their parents (Johannes and Amelie) from Germany to Mexico in 1907. (Otto’s youngest brother Ernesto would be born a decade later in Guadalajara.)

Woodcut by Hanns Otto Butterlin, Ixtaccihuatl (1921)

Woodcut by Hanns Otto Butterlin, Ixtaccihuatl (1921)

U.S. immigration records show that Otto Butterlin (5’9″ tall with blond hair and blue eyes) was resident there between August 1924 and October 1929, though he probably made trips to visit family in Mexico during that time.

Otto made his living as a chemist and supervisor of operations in various industrial plants for at least 15 years. At the time of the 1930 Mexican census (held on 15 May), he and his wife were living in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, where he was working at the sugar refinery.

The following year, in 1931 Margaret gave birth to their daughter Rita Elaine in Los Mochis. Rita went on to marry four times. Her first marriage (1951-58) was to one of Otto’s friends – textile artist and silkscreen innovator Jim Tillett (1913-1996) – and her second (1959-1963) to Chilean film star Octavio Señoret Guevara (1924-1990). She was subsequently briefly married (1967-69) to Haskel Bratter, before falling in love with and marrying (1971-his passing) Howard Perkins Taylor (1916-1993).

Woodcut by Hanns Otto Butterlin, Ixtaccihuatl (1921)

Woodcut by Hanns Otto Butterlin, Ixtaccihuatl (1921)

While Rita was still an infant, Otto decided to formalize his permanent right to residence in Mexico and became a naturalized Mexican citizen in October 1935. Immigration records show that he continued to visit the U.S. several times a year.

It appears to be at about this time that Otto decided to spend more time on his art.

By the early 1940s, Otto Butterlin was based in Mexico City and working as an executive in the Bayer chemical company, a position which enabled him to supply several well-known artists of the time, such as A. Amador Lugo (who was epileptic) with needed medications, at a time when they were very hard to obtain.

During this period, Butterlin taught art with, or to, numerous well-known Mexican artists, including Diego Rivera, Ricardo Martinez, José Chávez Morado, Ricardo Martínez and Gunther Gerzso.

Butterlin-Hanns-Otto-The-Funeral-ca1942

Hanns Otto Butterlin. The Funeral (ca 1942)

In September 1945, Otto and his wife Peggy, together with daughter Rita, relocated to live in Ajijic. In a 1945 article, Neill James, who had arrived in Ajijic a couple of years earlier, described Otto Butterlin as a “well known expressionist and abstract painter who owns a huerta in Ajijic where he lives with his wife, Peggy, and daughter, Rita.”

Otto Butterlin: Modern Figure Study. 1949

Otto Butterlin: Modern Figure Study. 1949

The group of artists exhibiting watercolors in May 1954 in “Galería Arturo Pani D.” in Calle Niza in Mexico City includes a Butterlin (probably Otto) alongside such famous contemporary artists as Raúl Anguiano, Fererico Cantú, Leonora Carrington, Carlos Mérida, Roberto Montenegro, Juan Soriano, Rufino Tamayo and Alfredo Zalce.

Otto Butterlin died in Ajijic on 2 April 1956.

Note (April 2016): We thank the Registro Civil in Chapala which kindly emailed us a copy of the official death certificate of Otto Butterlin.

This is an outline profile. Contact us if you would like to learn more about this particular artist or have information to share.

Partial list of sources:

  • Monica Señoret (Otto Butterlin’s granddaughter), personal communications via email. April 2015.
  • María Cristina Hernández Escobar. “Gunther Gerzso, The Appearance of the Invisible”. Voices of Mexico. UNAM. n.d. [formerly at http://www.revistascisan.unam.mx/Voices/pdfs/5323.pdf]
  • Robert L. Pincus, “WPA captures the soul of a nation”, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 February 2006, page F-1.
  • Robert Hilton (ed). Who’s Who In Latin America A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Men and Women Of Latin America. Part I – Mexico. (1946)

As always, we would love to receive any comments, corrections or additional information.

Related posts:

Unraveling the story of Lake Chapala’s artistic Butterlin brothers

 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s  4 Responses »
Nov 062014
 

While researching the history of the artists associated with the Lake Chapala region, I came across more and more references to the “two Butterlin brothers”. The problem was that different sources, including otherwise reputable art history sites, gave them quite different first names: Ernesto and Hans? Hans and Frederick? Linares and Otto?

There was very little evidence and it seemed impossible to tell which source was accurate, and why different accounts gave such different names, ages and details. They were usually described as “German”, but it was unclear whether they had been born in Germany or were the sons of German immigrants to Mexico.

Eventually, I compiled enough evidence to prove conclusively that there were not two Butterlin brothers, but three! Two had been born in Germany and were brought by their parents to Mexico. Safely ensconced in Guadalajara, the parents then had a third son, several years younger than his siblings.

The picture was complicated by the fact that two of the brothers used different names at different stages of their life, with the older brother rarely using his first name on his art once he arrived in Mexico, while the youngest brother adopted a surname for much of his artistic career that had no obvious connection to his family name.

Small wonder, then, that confusion reigned about the Butterlin brothers on many art history sites, some of which even failed to identify correctly the country of birth of each of the three brothers.

The three brothers (in order of birth) are:

There are still great gaps in my knowledge of this family, but the picture that finally began to emerge showed that the Butterlins deserved wider recognition as an artistic family of some consequence.

In future posts, I will show how all three Butterlin brothers contributed significantly to the development of the artist colony in the Lake Chapala area, albeit it in rather different ways.

Robert Neathery (1918-1998) retired young to become a full-time artist

 1960s, 1970s, 1980s  7 Responses »
Sep 292014
 

Artist Robert Bateman Neathery and his wife Ellie moved from California to Jocotepec in February 1965, and lived there the remainder of their lives. Bob Neathery continued to paint until about 1983 when his health began to deteriorate. He painted mainly genre scenes of Mexican village life, as well as portraits, and is especially remembered for his “voluptuous golden nudes” (see image), which often rely on a palette of brown-beige colors.

Robert Neathery: Young Bather (1968)

Robert Neathery: Young Bather (1968)

Born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on 8 September 1918, Bob Neathery died in Guadalajara on 15 March 1998. Eleanor “Ellie” Florence Schwindt, who would be his wife and best friend for almost 60 years, was born 23 December 1919 in Larimer County, Colorado, and died in Guadalajara on 8 August 2001.

Bob’s early life was spent partly in El Paso, Texas, (where the family resided when he was 12 years of age in 1930), partly in Muskogee (where they were living in 1935) and by age 19, Bob was living in Denver, Colorado, where he attended art school at the University of Denver.

Bob supported his art by working at a series of jobs including telegraph operator for the Denver and Rio Grande Railway, a sign painter of giant ice cream cones, automobiles and ladies drinking milk, a technical illustrator for North American Aviation, a sculptor of lamps at Gumps in San Francisco, and as manager of a co-op art gallery in Redondo Beach.

Bob and Ellie married on 28 November 1939 in Denver, Colorado, but by 1946 had moved to San Diego in California.

In November of that year, an exhibit at La Jolla art center in San Diego featured two “arresting sculptures”, one the work of Bob Neathery and the other sculpted by his elder sister Paula Nethery Rohrer (aka Paula Neathery Hocks) . The pieces are mentioned in a review of the exhibition in the San Diego Union.

From the mid 1950s, Bob and Ellie Neathery lived in Redondo Beach, where Bob Neathery worked for North American Aviation Corp and gave private art classes.

In November 1958, Neathery exhibited at the second Palos Verdes Outdoor Art Show, sponsored by the South Bay Community Art Association, and at a Book and Art Fair, sponsored by the Pacific Unitarian Church of Torrance.

Robert Neathery. Self portrait (1961

Robert Neathery. Self portrait (1961). From Palos Verdes Peninsula News.

After retiring from North American Aviation Corp. in 1959, Neathery became a full-time artist. He was a founding member of the Artists Cooperative Gallery at 121 S. Pacific Ave., Redondo Beach, which opened in July 1959. Along with  Gladys Bruchez and Marco Antonio Gomez, Neathery participated in a three person show at the gallery in January 1960.

The following year, in May 1961, several members of the Artists Cooperative Gallery, including Neathery (who was by then the Gallery Manager), showed their works at the  the opening of the Peninsula Center in Palos Verdes. The Cooperative Gallery moved their gallery to the Peninsula Center later that year, to “the contemporary, handsome TKM building, designed by Carver L. Baker & Assoc., at 27715 Silver Spur Road, Rolling Hills Estates.” Interviewed by a local journalist at about that time, Neathery declared that, “In a time of tension and strife and hate, my belief must be in the good and beautiful. I paint and create beauty as an antidote for the bad forces at work in the world.”

Neathery held a two man exhibit, with Byron Rodarmel at the Artists’ Co-op Gallery in August 1962; later that month both men showed works in a group exhibit at the Western Bank office in Torrance.

In November 1963, Neathery held a solo show of his paintings at the Angus Paint store in the Peninsula Center. By then, Neathery was president of the South Bay Art association and was represented in Los Angeles by Village Galleries in the Crenshaw district, in Carmel by Zantman Galleries, and in Monterey by Hidden Village. He was continuing to give painting classes in oils and watercolors. The following month, Neathery exhibited in a group show, the Holiday Art Festival, held at a private home in Palos Verdes, an event held for 475 guests, and at which Donald Totten (another artist with a connection to Lake Chapala) was a fellow exhibitor.

Bob and Ellie Neathery continued to live in California (in Redondo Beach) until their decision to relocate to Jocotepec in about 1965.

Two years later, in 1967 a thief entered their lakeside home, while they were out, and stole one of Bob’s paintings: a 24 x 30″ oil painting, from the couple’s bedroom, of a mountain landscape with a woman washing in a stream; the thief ignored appliances, clothes and everything else.

Bob Neathery in his studio. Photo: John Frost. Used with permission.

Bob Neathery in his studio. Photo: John Frost. Used with permission.

Bob Neathery held a solo show of 31 drawings and paintings in Guadalajara, at La Galeria (Galeria 8 de Julio) in April 1968. Author and art critic Allyn Hunt‘s review of the show in the Guadalajara Reporter praised Neathery as, “a sensuously exploratory painter”, adding that, “When he’s good he’s immensely exciting”. Hunt felt that Neathery’s most successful works included “Blue Plant” and “Kaleidoscope”, “in which six nude figures seem to move languorously in front of and behind one another in a sensual haze of muted blues, yellows and oranges.” According to Hunt, Neathery “feels highly influenced by the country’s “pow” lighting, as he calls it, and by the different cultural aura he finds here.”

In August 1968, Neathery had his works on show at the Holiday Inn in Chula Vista, mid-way between Chapala and Ajijic.

Later that year, in November, “La Galería” in Guadalajara held another show of Neathery’s works, immediately before a showing in the same gallery of works by Neathery’s Jocotepec neighbor John Frost. Allyn Hunt is again on hand to review the latest works by an artist who “possesses an excellent drawing hand and an ingenious drafting eye”, and is “at his best when pushing these talents into new territory.” Among Hunt’s favorite works were “The Vault” and “Model Resting”. In The Vault, “we see segments of walls, stairs, vaults, dim forms that are organized in such ways as to be haunting without being menacing, shadowy without being darkly somber.”

In 1970, Neathery exhibited a selection of watercolors in a one man show at Casa Blanca in Ajijic, and in May 1971, he was among a large group of artists that exhibited at the “Fiesta of Art” held at the residence of Mr and Mrs E. D. Windham (Calle 16 de Septiembre #33, Ajijic). Other artists at this show included Daphne Aluta; Mario Aluta; Beth Avary; Charles Blodgett; Antonio Cárdenas; Alan Davoll; Alice de Boton; Robert de Boton; Tom Faloon; John Frost; Dorothy Goldner; Burt Hawley; Peter Huf; Eunice (Hunt) Huf; Lona Isoard; Michael Heinichen; John Maybra Kilpatrick; Gail Michael; Bert Miller; John K. Peterson; Stuart Phillips; Hudson Rose; Mary Rose; Jesús Santana; Walt Shou; Frances Showalter; Sloane; Eleanor Smart; Robert Snodgrass; and Agustín Velarde.

In 1973, Neathery was appointed “gallery director” for the Galeria del Lago de Chapala, A.C., whose president was Arthur Ganung. In September of that year, Neathery exhibited “recent oils and watercolors” at El Tejaban (Zaragoza #1, Ajijic). That display comprised 32 works including nudes, landscapes, character studies and scenes from Mexican village life.

A group exhibit, the “Nude Show”, opened in February 1976 at the Galeria del Lago in Ajijic, which included a painting by Robert Neathery, as well as works by a long list of local and Guadalajara artists, among them Jonathan Aparicio, Arevalo, Dionicio, John Frost, Guillermo Guzmán, Gail Michel, John Peterson, Georg Rauch and Synnove Schaffer (Pettersen).

In December 1976, Neathery also had work in a group show organized by Katie Goodridge Ingram for the Jalisco Department of Bellas Artes and Tourism, held at Plaza de la Hermandad (IMPI building) in Puerto Vallarta. The show ran from 4-21 December and also included works by Jean Caragonne; Conrado Contreras; Daniel de Simone; Gustel Foust; John Frost; Richard Frush; Hubert Harmon; Rocky Karns; Jim Marthai; Gail Michel; David Olaf; John K. Peterson; Georg Rauch; and Sylvia Salmi.

Bob Neathery’s work has been exhibited in Los Angeles County Museum, Downey Museum and Long Beach Museum. He won seven first and second place awards and purchase prizes in the annual North American Aviation Corp. art shows prior to retirement.

[Note: Bob Neathery’s elder sister Paula Neathery Hocks (1916-2003), a noted book artist, poet and photographer, visited him several times in Mexico, presumably staying in Jocotepec. As her obituary states, “Her artist books and photographs have been featured in shows internationally and are included in numerous collections such as the Tate Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, U.K.; the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; contemporary book art collections at the Getty Museum in Santa Monica California, and the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive in Miami, Florida.; as well as special collections at the University of Iowa and the Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.”]

Sources:

  • Guadalajara Reporter: 4 March 1967; 4 May 1968; 31 Aug 1968; 30 Nov 1968; 21 Nov 1970; 3 Feb 1973; 22 Sep 1973; 31 January 1976
  • Hollywood Riviera Tribune, Number 5, 13 November 1958
  • Informador: 26 Nov 1968
  • Palos Verdes Peninsula News, 30 October 1958; 16 July 1959; 31 December 1959; 5 December 1963; 12 December 1963.
  • Rolling Hills Herald, Number 71, 16 February 1961

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.

Eunice and Peter Huf

 1970s  No Responses »
Aug 112014
 

Eunice and Peter Huf are artists who met in Mexico in the 1960s and lived in Ajijic on Lake Chapala for several years, before relocating to Europe with their two sons in the early 1970s.

In Ajijic, the Hufs were sufficiently successful that they were able to live off their art.

Huf+Nottonson-CoverPeter and Eunice Huf were founder members of a small group of artists, known as Grupo 68, that exhibited regularly at the Camino Real hotel in Guadalajara and at various galleries.

Grupo 68 initially had 5 members: Peter Huf, Eunice Huf, Jack Rutherford, John Peterson and (Don) Shaw (who was known only by his surname). Jack Rutherford dropped out of the group after a few months, but the remaining four stayed together until 1971.

In 1969, the Hufs co-founded a co-operative art gallery “La Galería”, located on Calle Zaragoza at its intersection with Juarez.

Both artists had solo show during their time in Mexico. For example, Eunice Huf held a solo show in 1968, sponsored by the Mexican Olympic program at Galeria 8 de Julio in Guadalajara. Her show was followed by a solo show of works by Georg Rauch also under the patronage of Señora Holt and the Olympics.

They also took part in many group shows, including the “Fiesta de Arte”, held at a private home in Ajijic in May 1971. Others in that show included Daphne Aluta; Mario Aluta; Beth Avary; Charles Blodgett; Antonio Cárdenas; Alan Davoll; Alice de Boton; Robert de Boton; Tom Faloon; John Frost; Dorothy Goldner; Burt Hawley; Lona Isoard; Michael Heinichen; John Maybra Kilpatrick; Gail Michael; Bert Miller; Robert Neathery; John K. Peterson; Stuart Phillips; Hudson Rose; Mary Rose; Jesús Santana; Walt Shou; Frances Showalter; Sloane; Eleanor Smart; Robert Snodgrass; and Agustín Velarde.

Before leaving Mexico (with every intention of returning), they illustrated a short 32-page booklet entitled Mexico My Home. Primitive Art and Modern Poetry With 50 easy to learn Spanish words and phrases. For all children from 8 to 80, published in Guadalajara by Boutique d’Artes Graficas in 1972. The poems in the booklet were written by Ira N. Nottonson, who was also living in Ajijic at the time. The illustrations in the book are Mexican naif in style, whereas their own art tended to be far more abstract or surrealist.

The couple left Mexico in June 1972, and lived for a couple of years in southern Spain before moving to Germany. Despite their earlier intentions, they never did return to Mexico.

Acknowledgment:

Grateful thanks to Eunice and Peter Huf for their warm hospitality during a visit to their home and studio in October 2014. Their archive of photos and press clippings from their time in Mexico proved invaluable, as did their memories of people and events of the time.

If you wish to add to or correct anything in this brief biography, then please use the comments feature or email us.

Francisco Ochoa (1946-2006)

 1980s, 1990s onwards  No Responses »
Jul 282014
 

Francisco Ochoa was born in Jamay, Jalisco, mid-way between Ocotlán and La Barca, on 4 Sep 1943 (some sources say 1946). The family moved to Mexico City when he was 5 years old. He subsequently became an accountant.

Francisco Ochoa. 1982. El canto de las sirenas.

Francisco Ochoa. 1982. El canto de las sirenas.

He was about 36 years old when he enrolled in the  Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda”. While studying there, he became the accountant for the Galería Estela Shapiro. Recognizing his talent, Shapiro offered him space in her gallery for a one-man show, which was well received by the art-loving public. Ochoa abandoned accountancy to focus full-time on his painting. Numerous individual exhibitions followed, in locations such as the Instituto Francés de América Latina, the Casa de la Cultura Jesús Reyes Heroles, the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, the Museo Universitario del Chopo, the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo, and in the Galería OMR. His works have also been exhibited in Guadalajara (including the Cabañas Cultural Institute), and in California and San Antonio, Texas.

After the death of his mother, Ochoa returned to Guadalajara, from where he continued to supply Galeria OMR with his work. Unfortunately, shortly after moving to Guadalajara, he was diagnosed with oral cancer; he died on 29 March 2006.

Ochoa was primarily an oil painter, but also left many sketches and drawings. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Regional Museum of Guadalajara and the José Luis Cuevas museum in Mexico City.

His paintings shows great ingenuity, and are somewhat naif in style, using color and a sense of fun to offer a fresh view, replete with social criticism, often poking fun at the idiosyncrasies of Mexico and the absurdities of everyday life. This has led to him being described as a “satirical costumbrista.”

It is unclear whether Ochoa ever painted Lake Chapala, though his 1982 work “El Canto de las Sirenas” (“Song of the Sirens”) (image) could easily be interpreted as having been influenced by his familiarity with the lake.

In his will, he left numerous drawing and two oil paintings to the Casa de la Cultura in Jamay, which has now been renamed after him. Since 2012, one room in the building shows works by Ochoa and a second room is used for temporary exhibitions.

For more images of Francisco Ochoa’s art, see Museoblaisten.com

Artist-environmentalist Rysiek Ledwon lived in Jocotepec in the mid-1980s

 1980s  3 Responses »
Mar 222012
 

Artist and environmentalist Ra(w) Rysiek (formerly known as Richard “Rick”) Ledwon lived in Jocotepec several times for short periods from the early 1980s on.

Born in about 1958 in Saskatchewan, Canada, to a musical couple from Poland, Ledwon studied Fine Arts at University of Alberta, but apparently became disillusioned by professors who told him he’d never make it in his chosen field. He traveled to Europe. On his return to Canada, he studied graphic design at Grant MacEwan Art College (Edmonton, Alberta) and at Fredericton College.

Rick Ledwon. Lago de Chapala. ca 1988. Reproduced by kind permission of Dale and Wayne Palfrey

Rick Ledwon. Lago de Chapala. Lithograph, ca 1985. Reproduced by kind permission of Dale Palfrey.

Ledwon then worked for Air Canada (Latin America and Caribbean) and as a freelance graphic artist. He visited Jocotepec in the early 1980s to meet artist-photographer John Frost (on the recommendation of a mutual friend), and then worked with both John Frost, and also with Georg Rauch, another Jocotepec-based artist, for almost two years. During this time, he developed silk screen and other techniques. After returning to Canada, he worked as a picture framer at an art gallery, but returned to Jocotepec later that year to work on silkscreens and paintings, primarily of flowers and architecture.

In 1985, his silkscreens (example above) were regularly exhibited in the Posada Ajijic and sold well. While Ledwon’s early silkscreens were somewhat derivative of the designs of his mentor Georg Rauch, his later work, especially when depicting women in Michoacán, was more original.

Ledwon participated in a joint exhibition in Mexico City in 1988 titled “Help Save Lake Chapala,” alongside Daphne Aluta, Nancy Bollembach, Luisa Julian, Conrado Contreras, Georg Rauch, Eleanor Smart, Enrique Velázquez and Laura Goeglin.

envirobusWhen he returned permanently to Canada, in his early thirties, and was living in Ottawa, Ledwon decorated the ‘Envirobus’ (see image), which was used to promote local environmental groups and environmentally oriented businesses, such as organic farmers and recycling companies. The bus itself was a moving mural, painted to represent Ledwon’s impression of forests from all over the Americas.

In more recent years, Ledwon has resided in the Slocan Valley in B.C., Canada, built (and taught how to build) unique strawbale houses in several countries, tended organic gardens, and taught about the raw food diet, while practicing Qigong.

Note

This is an updated version of a post first published 22 March 2012.

Sources

  • Anon. 1987. Portrait of the Artist, in El Ojo del Lago, January 1987.
  • Ottawa Citizen: 8 August 1991, 13.
  • Rysiek Ledwon. 2003. Building with Strawbales. Issues Magazine, June/July 2003.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

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